[00:01] Bob Dobbs: Hello,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs with episode number 51 of our ongoing series of analyzing McLuhan drama of cognition,
[00:11] Bob Dobbs: perhaps.
[00:15] Bob Dobbs: We're now at page 101 of my small book on what we didn't know about Trump,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: and there's a quote at the top,
[00:25] Bob Dobbs: and it says,
[00:26] Bob Dobbs: and this is from a very rare,
[00:29] Bob Dobbs: valuable interview.
[00:31] Bob Dobbs: in something called Forces Magazine,
[00:33] Bob Dobbs: put out by Hydro-Quebec.
[00:36] Bob Dobbs: And this was issue number 22 in 1973.
[00:40] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan is saying,
[00:42] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[00:43] Bob Dobbs: the new art form of our time is the media themselves,
[00:46] Bob Dobbs: not painting,
[00:47] Bob Dobbs: not movies,
[00:48] Bob Dobbs: not drama,
[00:49] Bob Dobbs: but the media themselves have become the new art forms.
[00:52] Bob Dobbs: Then there's dot,
[00:54] Bob Dobbs: writes cartoons,
[00:56] Bob Dobbs: dot,
[00:58] Bob Dobbs: I have wanted to write a play for a long time on the media,
[01:01] Bob Dobbs: and the media themselves are the avant-garde area of our society.
[01:05] Bob Dobbs: Avant-garde no longer exists in painting and music and poetry.
[01:08] Bob Dobbs: It's in the media themselves,
[01:10] Bob Dobbs: not in the programs.
[01:12] Bob Dobbs: Avant-garde is not in hockey,
[01:13] Bob Dobbs: not in baseball or any of these entertainments.
[01:17] Bob Dobbs: It's in the media themselves.
[01:18] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[01:19] Bob Dobbs: around that time,
[01:21] Bob Dobbs: there was a rock critic named Richard Meltzer.
[01:25] Bob Dobbs: He was almost the first one.
[01:28] Bob Dobbs: And he put out a book called The Aesthetics of Rock in 1970,
[01:32] Bob Dobbs: and he was totally fed up with the industry.
[01:34] Bob Dobbs: He liked the Malinowski,
[01:36] Bob Dobbs: sort of the late 60s.
[01:37] Bob Dobbs: But by 1970,
[01:39] Bob Dobbs: he did this book,
[01:39] Bob Dobbs: and he was a graduate of Yale.
[01:42] Bob Dobbs: And then he dropped out of rock journalism,
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: and he started following wrestling.
[01:51] Bob Dobbs: Back then,
[01:51] Bob Dobbs: it would be silly stuff,
[01:52] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[01:53] Bob Dobbs: just hanging out with the people or something.
[01:56] Bob Dobbs: And anti-intellectual.
[01:59] Bob Dobbs: So I always remembered that.
[02:01] Bob Dobbs: So when McLuhan says in 1973,
[02:04] Bob Dobbs: pretty well around the same time as Meltzer's crack-up,
[02:08] Bob Dobbs: he's saying,
[02:09] Bob Dobbs: the avant-garde is not in hockey,
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: not in baseball.
[02:12] Bob Dobbs: Who the hell thought the avant-garde was in hockey?
[02:15] Bob Dobbs: Nobody thought that was the avant-garde,
[02:17] Bob Dobbs: okay?
[02:18] Bob Dobbs: They thought it was John Cage and Fluxus and the artists down in New York City,
[02:24] Bob Dobbs: and maybe in Europe.
[02:26] Bob Dobbs: But some postmodern people like
[02:30] Bob Dobbs: Meltzer was on to that,
[02:32] Bob Dobbs: and he picked not hockey but wrestling.
[02:35] Bob Dobbs: So I always remembered that,
[02:36] Bob Dobbs: but I always thought that was pretty savvy of McLuhan.
[02:39] Bob Dobbs: He kind of knew that this weird attempt to maintain a mind,
[02:45] Bob Dobbs: apply the mind to something after the disillusionment of the 60s,
[02:50] Bob Dobbs: and so he had Meltzer studying wrestling.
[02:53] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[02:53] Bob Dobbs: it seems to me,
[02:54] Bob Dobbs: picked up on that.
[02:56] Bob Dobbs: By saying,
[02:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[02:58] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[02:59] Bob Dobbs: the traditional cultural New York stuff is not the avant-garde.
[03:02] Bob Dobbs: You're not going to get that in New York.
[03:03] Bob Dobbs: You've got to go and watch wrestling.
[03:05] Bob Dobbs: He almost says that,
[03:08] Bob Dobbs: but he goes a step further and says it's the media themselves.
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: And then people say,
[03:11] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[03:11] Bob Dobbs: you mean the content,
[03:12] Bob Dobbs: the pro-T Columbo and
[03:14] Bob Dobbs: 60 Minutes or something?
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: No,
[03:16] Bob Dobbs: not in the programs.
[03:17] Bob Dobbs: This is really an important distinction,
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: that the form of the media alters society like people thought art would do.
[03:26] Bob Dobbs: Art apparently in the
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: 18th and 19th century had a big impact on the urban populations.
[03:31] Bob Dobbs: They'd go to a new concert or a new opera or a new painting gallery demonstration of somebody's work and people would get all involved in it.
[03:44] Bob Dobbs: At least it was reported to us they did,
[03:46] Bob Dobbs: right?
[03:46] Bob Dobbs: There was much discussion and the gnashing of teeth over whether this art was good enough for the Royal Academy or not.
[03:56] Bob Dobbs: But all that world no longer was anti-environment anymore in the 20th century.
[04:02] Bob Dobbs: So it becomes the effect of changing society that art was pretending to do and may be doing a little bit was taken over by first the printing press and then the electric media.
[04:17] Bob Dobbs: So you then come up with McLuhan statement somewhere that he says Canada.
[04:25] Bob Dobbs: is the present anti-environment.
[04:28] Bob Dobbs: So what was the artist of the
[04:30] Bob Dobbs: 60s? It wasn't
[04:32] Bob Dobbs: Picasso, Frank Zappa,
[04:33] Bob Dobbs: or somebody,
[04:34] Bob Dobbs: Warhol.
[04:35] Bob Dobbs: It was Canada.
[04:37] Bob Dobbs: Canada as a corporate entity was an appropriate anti-environment to the American global theater that it was making.
[04:46] Bob Dobbs: So that point I'm making about Canada as...
[04:52] Bob Dobbs: In other words,
[04:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is not looking for art from John Cage.
[04:55] Bob Dobbs: He's looking anti-environment.
[04:57] Bob Dobbs: And maybe he is the Canada,
[05:00] Bob Dobbs: Anthropomorphic Physical,
[05:02] Bob Dobbs: that he's talking about.
[05:05] Bob Dobbs: But that's quite a statement to say that a country is an anti-environment,
[05:10] Bob Dobbs: is the avant-garde,
[05:12] Bob Dobbs: or is the protection.
[05:14] Bob Dobbs: So that's why this quote is so important.
[05:19] Bob Dobbs: I don't think anybody got that,
[05:21] Bob Dobbs: ever.
[05:22] Bob Dobbs: At least no one I ever encountered,
[05:24] Bob Dobbs: no one even knew what I was talking about.
[05:28] Bob Dobbs: So this is one of my favorite quotes,
[05:32] Bob Dobbs: that the media anti-environment and is the artist.
[05:42] Bob Dobbs: Then that gets into where it's at, and the anti-environment is a rapid series of innovations.
[05:48] Bob Dobbs: And then it gets into...
[05:50] Bob Dobbs: The global theater and then the Global Membrane,
[05:53] Bob Dobbs: the stuff I'm trying to lay out,
[05:54] Bob Dobbs: and then the Android Meme.
[05:56] Bob Dobbs: So,
[05:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[05:57] Bob Dobbs: once you get into the Android Meme,
[05:58] Bob Dobbs: that is the new artist.
[06:01] Bob Dobbs: So the art world itself in New York City,
[06:05] Bob Dobbs: painting,
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: music,
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: poetry,
[06:07] Bob Dobbs: but especially painting,
[06:09] Bob Dobbs: it just gets raped by Wall Street every five years,
[06:12] Bob Dobbs: right?
[06:13] Bob Dobbs: The guys have a boom,
[06:14] Bob Dobbs: they need to put their money somewhere,
[06:16] Bob Dobbs: so they go to the art schools and...
[06:18] Bob Dobbs: hijack some students and put them up for a couple of weeks as the next new artist.
[06:24] Bob Dobbs: And so many art critics of the Village Voice in different places that I would read,
[06:29] Bob Dobbs: they all quit.
[06:30] Bob Dobbs: Art had become a ghetto.
[06:33] Bob Dobbs: It was not serving the anti-environment role that they thought it had been doing.
[06:39] Bob Dobbs: But they did not know the important point McLuhan was saying,
[06:44] Bob Dobbs: that the media anti-environment were the anti-environment.
[06:47] Bob Dobbs: See,
[06:48] Bob Dobbs: to get that makes you understand that McLuhan knew something other people didn't.
[06:54] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else knew.
[06:55] Bob Dobbs: Not even John Cage and the artists that romanticized McLuhan or made a big deal out of him.
[07:02] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of that little dissertation?
[07:04] Bob Dobbs: Do you agree with everything I say?
[07:06] Cameron McEwen: Not everything,
[07:07] Cameron McEwen: no.
[07:08] Cameron McEwen: You don't?
[07:10] Cameron McEwen: I agree with the gist,
[07:12] Cameron McEwen: but I would say that the...
[07:18] Cameron McEwen: I want to understand what you were just saying.
[07:20] Cameron McEwen: We have to realize that most of the stuff you were saying were not statements,
[07:26] Cameron McEwen: it was questions.
[07:27] Cameron McEwen: So,
[07:28] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[07:28] Cameron McEwen: if we say that Canada is the anti-environment and something like Canada is the artist,
[07:38] Cameron McEwen: it's not as if we know just what
[07:44] Cameron McEwen: Canada was and it's not as if we know
[07:48] Cameron McEwen: How Canada could function as an artist or as the artist.
[07:54] Cameron McEwen: Those are questions,
[07:56] Cameron McEwen: right?
[07:56] Cameron McEwen: There's something,
[07:58] Cameron McEwen: if we want to understand what human beings are,
[08:03] Cameron McEwen: we need to understand what they're subject to.
[08:07] Cameron McEwen: And what they're subject to is something like the art form of media.
[08:12] Cameron McEwen: But that's a question,
[08:13] Cameron McEwen: that's not a statement as if...
[08:16] Cameron McEwen: We pick up a paper and we say,
[08:19] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[08:20] Cameron McEwen: this is what human beings are all about,
[08:23] Cameron McEwen: waving the paper around or waving a cassette around or something like that.
[08:29] Cameron McEwen: It's an appeal for research into things that we think are obvious but turn out not to be.
[08:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[08:40] Bob Dobbs: so titles like Culture Is Our Business.
[08:45] Bob Dobbs: They become popular themes by the
[08:47] Bob Dobbs: 90s. There was this guy named Frank.
[08:49] Bob Dobbs: Frank was his last name.
[08:50] Bob Dobbs: He wrote a book saying all of the independent rock groups or Kurt Cobain and the guys trying not to be compromised,
[08:59] Bob Dobbs: they all get compromised.
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: The media,
[09:03] Bob Dobbs: the big corporations swallow up anything that tries to be art or against the flow.
[09:08] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[09:08] Cameron McEwen: so it wasn't just painting that was subject to that process.
[09:13] Cameron McEwen: It was music.
[09:14] Cameron McEwen: It was especially films,
[09:17] Cameron McEwen: it was any kind of writing whatsoever was commercialized,
[09:24] Cameron McEwen: not in the banal sense of being subject to a certain title pull of the corporations,
[09:36] Cameron McEwen: commercialized in the sense of subject to a certain understanding of world.
[09:44] Cameron McEwen: That was groundless.
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[09:47] Bob Dobbs: the
[09:47] Bob Dobbs: I like to say the Gutenberg art or
[09:51] Bob Dobbs: All analog media was the content of the digital Android Meme.
[09:55] Bob Dobbs: So,
[09:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[09:55] Bob Dobbs: music,
[09:56] Bob Dobbs: painting,
[09:57] Bob Dobbs: film,
[09:58] Bob Dobbs: poetry,
[09:59] Bob Dobbs: even television were the content.
[10:04] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:05] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[10:06] Cameron McEwen: I think that's an important statement you just made,
[10:08] Cameron McEwen: probably a really important one for understanding your pamphlet.
[10:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[10:13] Cameron McEwen: When you say that the artist was the Android Meme,
[10:20] Cameron McEwen: You certainly don't mean something like there's some place or some time when we could understand the Android Meme as a certain kind of person or a certain kind
[10:36] Cameron McEwen: of thing or a certain force or something.
[10:40] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're saying is that there's something going on that can only be understood.
[10:48] Cameron McEwen: by contemplating something like the Android Meme,
[10:51] Cameron McEwen: but what the Android Meme is,
[10:56] Cameron McEwen: is a question that more or less falls through itself in its complexity.
[11:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[11:04] Cameron McEwen: And that we have to stick with it in order to understand not only what it is through an action that's going on around us,
[11:17] Cameron McEwen: Um,
[11:18] Cameron McEwen: but in order to understand in the first place how we would ever investigate a question like that.
[11:25] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[11:25] Bob Dobbs: so that
[11:26] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard simulation or the matrix,
[11:29] Bob Dobbs: these things don't make it.
[11:30] Bob Dobbs: It's not what the Android Meme is.
[11:34] Bob Dobbs: There are subplots of it,
[11:36] Bob Dobbs: but what you're saying is the complexity of analyzing it.
[11:40] Bob Dobbs: It's like analyzing Finnegans Wake.
[11:42] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake is the closest to presenting the Android Meme in book form.
[11:46] Bob Dobbs: you know obsolete medium uh so um the problems that people have wrestling with Finnegans Wake are a rehearsal of wrestling with the Android Meme i can buy that yeah so
[12:03] Bob Dobbs: you know you have Culture Is Our Business what what you know some college student okay what's he saying Culture Is Our Business no we don't like business that's capitalism we're socialists we're
[12:14] Bob Dobbs: We're radicals,
[12:15] Bob Dobbs: we're bohemians,
[12:16] Bob Dobbs: we're not materialists,
[12:18] Bob Dobbs: we do yoga.
[12:21] Bob Dobbs: Since the 90s,
[12:22] Bob Dobbs: the cliche
[12:25] Bob Dobbs: North American young person who's trying to be intelligent or get somewhere with their intelligence,
[12:32] Bob Dobbs: they might find,
[12:33] Bob Dobbs: well,
[12:33] Bob Dobbs: that's odd.
[12:33] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business.
[12:34] Bob Dobbs: No,
[12:35] Bob Dobbs: culture is really beyond business.
[12:37] Bob Dobbs: But to understand how accurate that statement is,
[12:39] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business,
[12:42] Bob Dobbs: is...
[12:42] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[12:43] Bob Dobbs: what you're saying getting close to understand the Android Meme how that anticipates that and so McLuhan was talking back then in the late 60s on the level that nobody believed and he's made right occasionally he would make fun of culture like how the crtc uh
[12:58] Bob Dobbs: you know controlling canadian content in the radio canadian radio and McLuhan said well the user is the content if you have somebody from poland watching canadian tv it's polish tv you know what i mean
[13:12] Bob Dobbs: He had great ways to talk about it,
[13:15] Bob Dobbs: interesting little quirks or absurdities,
[13:17] Bob Dobbs: to show that he was pointing to something that nobody was getting.
[13:22] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[13:22] Bob Dobbs: But this...
[13:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[13:25] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.
[13:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[13:28] Cameron McEwen: what I'd like to do is just think about Culture
[13:31] Cameron McEwen: Culture Is Our Business for a short time.
[13:35] Cameron McEwen: First off,
[13:36] Cameron McEwen: Culture Is Our Business was a book published...
[13:41] Cameron McEwen: What,
[13:41] Cameron McEwen: in 1970?
[13:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:43] Cameron McEwen: Something like that?
[13:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:44] Cameron McEwen: But the phrase itself was much earlier.
[13:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:49] Cameron McEwen: I think already in the 1950s he used the phrase.
[13:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[13:52] Cameron McEwen: And he had an essay at some point called
[13:55] Cameron McEwen: Culture Is Our Business.
[13:57] Cameron McEwen: But when we think about it,
[14:00] Cameron McEwen: Culture Is Our Business is not something that's obvious in the sense of saying,
[14:07] Cameron McEwen: well...
[14:10] Cameron McEwen: Culture is subject to business in the sense that we were just talking about,
[14:15] Cameron McEwen: where everything becomes commercialized.
[14:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[14:17] Bob Dobbs: commodification,
[14:18] Bob Dobbs: they called it.
[14:19] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[14:20] Cameron McEwen: So then Culture Is Our Business can be taken to mean the real thing that we have to think about.
[14:28] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,
[14:29] Cameron McEwen: the real business of our lives in a non-commercial sense is to try to figure out what culture is.
[14:38] Cameron McEwen: Culture is culture.
[14:39] Cameron McEwen: culture is something that is transpersonal.
[14:43] Cameron McEwen: And its movement through history is what shapes how people see and how they feel.
[14:54] Cameron McEwen: But we don't know anything about what culture is.
[14:57] Cameron McEwen: So we propagate it,
[15:01] Cameron McEwen: but we do so unconsciously and without understanding its effects.
[15:06] Cameron McEwen: So the real business that we have to get down to is figuring out what culture is.
[15:12] Cameron McEwen: Or another whole meaning is that Culture Is Our Business can be taken to mean whenever we do anything,
[15:21] Cameron McEwen: whenever we go about our business and daily lives,
[15:25] Cameron McEwen: culture is already implicated in it,
[15:27] Cameron McEwen: but we don't know that.
[15:29] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[15:29] Cameron McEwen: So Culture Is Our Business.
[15:31] Cameron McEwen: Culture is what we're always already doing,
[15:34] Cameron McEwen: but we have no idea that we're doing it.
[15:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[15:39] Bob Dobbs: And we misplace our values.
[15:41] Bob Dobbs: where values can be applied.
[15:43] Bob Dobbs: So Culture Is Our Business means more and more participation by everybody in media coverage so that by the 90s people are saying the culture is getting dumber and dumber and
[15:59] Bob Dobbs: I say no.
[16:01] Bob Dobbs: All aspects of culture as you were just saying everything we do is becoming the content and not all of it is pretty or
[16:11] Bob Dobbs: sophisticated.
[16:13] Bob Dobbs: It's what he was actually saying in the 50s.
[16:16] Bob Dobbs: The whole planet,
[16:18] Bob Dobbs: all the nations and cultures and media become the content of this ongoing process.
[16:24] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[16:25] Cameron McEwen: right.
[16:27] Cameron McEwen: Imagine that culture is something like a language,
[16:31] Cameron McEwen: and then somebody comes along and they say,
[16:34] Cameron McEwen: well,
[16:34] Cameron McEwen: vowels are good,
[16:35] Cameron McEwen: but consonants are bad,
[16:38] Cameron McEwen: right?
[16:39] Cameron McEwen: Or the first
[16:39] Cameron McEwen: part of the alphabet is pretty,
[16:43] Cameron McEwen: but when you get down around KLM,
[16:46] Cameron McEwen: it's not pretty anymore.
[16:48] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[16:49] Cameron McEwen: It's ridiculous.
[16:51] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is saying is the most important aspects of human life are completely unconscious to us.
[17:02] Cameron McEwen: And so we actually exist in a kind of fog that is
[17:08] Cameron McEwen: It determines everything,
[17:10] Cameron McEwen: and we know nothing about it.
[17:11] Cameron McEwen: And we think that we have identities,
[17:15] Cameron McEwen: we think we have conceptions and perceptions,
[17:18] Cameron McEwen: and all this sort of stuff,
[17:20] Cameron McEwen: and it's all bullshit.
[17:22] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[17:23] Cameron McEwen: So wrestling tells us who we are.
[17:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[17:26] Bob Dobbs: because as scandals became more and more the content of the news,
[17:31] Bob Dobbs: scandals everywhere,
[17:33] Bob Dobbs: and more and more outrageous scandals the last 30 years,
[17:37] Bob Dobbs: But nobody seems to get caught or nobody really puts their foot down and says,
[17:43] Bob Dobbs: we definitely got to turn off TV.
[17:45] Bob Dobbs: This is just wiping us out.
[17:46] Bob Dobbs: We're just so corrupt.
[17:48] Bob Dobbs: Because news was the sense-making engine and scandals made wealth.
[17:57] Bob Dobbs: It made movies,
[17:57] Bob Dobbs: it made books,
[17:58] Bob Dobbs: magazine stories,
[17:59] Bob Dobbs: right?
[18:00] Bob Dobbs: So you had to have humans screwing up.
[18:03] Bob Dobbs: That was the new culture.
[18:06] Bob Dobbs: That was the sense-making content in a world where there was no possibility of wealth anymore,
[18:12] Bob Dobbs: technically on the media formal level,
[18:15] Bob Dobbs: because everybody shared the same discarded space,
[18:18] Bob Dobbs: which we weren't even aware of what that was or even how to describe it.
[18:22] Bob Dobbs: So all human activity becomes the content.
[18:25] Bob Dobbs: And so you can see people getting more and more disgusted with their lives and with society because of what the media is showing.
[18:35] Bob Dobbs: not knowing that the media could use everything to make wealth.
[18:39] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[18:39] Cameron McEwen: So people are disgusted,
[18:41] Cameron McEwen: and they think that they can identify where the disgust arises,
[18:48] Cameron McEwen: but they can't.
[18:51] Cameron McEwen: They have no idea why things are becoming disgusting,
[18:56] Cameron McEwen: no idea at all.
[18:57] Cameron McEwen: And that's why.
[18:59] Cameron McEwen: the processes are only snowballing into today.
[19:05] Cameron McEwen: People are desperately looking for a break,
[19:08] Cameron McEwen: B-R-A-K-E,
[19:12] Cameron McEwen: but they have no idea where to find it.
[19:16] Cameron McEwen: So when you talk about scandals never being resolved,
[19:22] Cameron McEwen: the mechanism there is the scandal is a breaking of rules.
[19:27] Cameron McEwen: moral rules or aesthetic rules or something.
[19:31] Cameron McEwen: But of course,
[19:32] Cameron McEwen: those rules are groundless.
[19:34] Cameron McEwen: So the way the news functions is to say,
[19:37] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[19:38] Cameron McEwen: these terrible things have happened.
[19:40] Cameron McEwen: They've broken these rules.
[19:42] Cameron McEwen: But of course,
[19:43] Cameron McEwen: that can't be resolved because those rules are hanging in the air.
[19:49] Cameron McEwen: They're groundless.
[19:50] Cameron McEwen: They're non-existent.
[19:52] Cameron McEwen: And so you have to move on to the next scandal.
[19:55] Cameron McEwen: So you...
[19:55] Cameron McEwen: You implicate the rules,
[19:57] Cameron McEwen: and then when the rug gets pulled out from underneath the rules,
[20:00] Cameron McEwen: then you move on to the next scandal where rules could be again implicated.
[20:07] Bob Dobbs: And the whole society is engaged in making the word that makes the market,
[20:10] Bob Dobbs: and the word is scandal,
[20:13] Bob Dobbs: endless insult.
[20:16] Bob Dobbs: like you take Tucker Carlson if you listen to him for a while every night he finds some outrageous thing and he calls everybody an idiot and all the
[20:25] Bob Dobbs: esteemed members of politics and everything.
[20:27] Bob Dobbs: They're all doofuses.
[20:28] Bob Dobbs: He really calls out people,
[20:29] Bob Dobbs: really insults them.
[20:33] Bob Dobbs: But he does this every day,
[20:34] Bob Dobbs: and he's been doing it for years.
[20:36] Bob Dobbs: What kind of job is that?
[20:38] Bob Dobbs: He can't stop it.
[20:40] Bob Dobbs: He's outraged.
[20:41] Bob Dobbs: We've got to do something about this.
[20:42] Bob Dobbs: We've got to find out why this is happening.
[20:43] Bob Dobbs: But he's never going to actually let me on there and explain to him what's going on,
[20:48] Bob Dobbs: right?
[20:50] Bob Dobbs: He's not going to let perception come in.
[20:53] Bob Dobbs: The whole,
[20:54] Bob Dobbs: everybody,
[20:54] Bob Dobbs: CNN,
[20:55] Bob Dobbs: all the stations,
[20:56] Bob Dobbs: endless outrage.
[20:58] Bob Dobbs: And the ultimate paradox was the media said,
[21:01] Bob Dobbs: here comes Trump.
[21:02] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[21:02] Bob Dobbs: man,
[21:02] Bob Dobbs: we can make a lot of money off this guy.
[21:05] Bob Dobbs: And it pushed,
[21:07] Bob Dobbs: they pushed it to extreme and he ended up being president.
[21:10] Bob Dobbs: And then,
[21:11] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[21:12] Bob Dobbs: well,
[21:12] Bob Dobbs: he's president,
[21:12] Bob Dobbs: we continue making a lot of money.
[21:14] Bob Dobbs: And they made up all these hoaxes and scandals.
[21:18] Bob Dobbs: And then Biden comes in and...
[21:19] Bob Dobbs: Apparently the news starts to complain.
[21:21] Bob Dobbs: We need more lively scandals.
[21:23] Bob Dobbs: We need to Trump back in to get the scandal quotient up.
[21:27] Bob Dobbs: Trump exposed this process we're trying to get at,
[21:32] Bob Dobbs: you and I,
[21:33] Bob Dobbs: talking about.
[21:34] Bob Dobbs: He was an unwitting,
[21:36] Bob Dobbs: I would say he was the greatest artist of the last 34 years.
[21:40] Bob Dobbs: If you take an artist as someone who makes a big impact,
[21:43] Bob Dobbs: you could even say a general,
[21:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: Eisenhower.
[21:46] Bob Dobbs: somebody that accomplishes a major change in direction of where things are going.
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: Trump still doing that.
[21:54] Bob Dobbs: So no,
[21:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[21:58] Bob Dobbs: Philip Glass never got anywhere with Eisenstein on the beach,
[22:02] Bob Dobbs: or
[22:02] Bob Dobbs: Zappa never became president,
[22:04] Bob Dobbs: and just all these other great artists in the culture of Time magazine world,
[22:10] Bob Dobbs: the endless celebrity world,
[22:13] Bob Dobbs: none of them creates a change.
[22:14] Bob Dobbs: Trump caused a change in the sense that he made somebody feel threatened.
[22:20] Bob Dobbs: He was going into the deep state,
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: like the deep scandal.
[22:24] Bob Dobbs: He was actually going to get to the scandal of all scandals.
[22:26] Bob Dobbs: And they're still impeaching him the third time for doing that,
[22:31] Bob Dobbs: disguised as some kind of disruption on January 6th.
[22:34] Bob Dobbs: So if I'm dealing with a somnambulist,
[22:38] Bob Dobbs: I'll bring this up.
[22:38] Bob Dobbs: I don't have too much opportunity usually to meet a somnambulist because
[22:42] Bob Dobbs: I don't have that kind of social life.
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: But,
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: uh...
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: If I have a chance,
[22:45] Bob Dobbs: I'll point this out.
[22:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[22:48] Bob Dobbs: you find Trump disgusting or you find Trump fantastic.
[22:51] Bob Dobbs: No,
[22:51] Bob Dobbs: no,
[22:52] Bob Dobbs: Trump the first guy to actually change society in 50 years.
[22:56] Bob Dobbs: And he is the tech body,
[22:58] Bob Dobbs: which is a later stage of the Android Meme.
[23:01] Bob Dobbs: And that's what my book is trying to get to,
[23:04] Bob Dobbs: Trump is the tech body.
[23:06] Bob Dobbs: And that's a difficult thing to get to because we're just still back at global.
[23:09] Bob Dobbs: Philly's becoming global theater.
[23:12] Bob Dobbs: but in the global theater
[23:14] Bob Dobbs: the media become the art forms.
[23:16] Bob Dobbs: And when you know that,
[23:20] Bob Dobbs: you're not going to be running out to galleries or to movies or to any cultural stuff that creates wealth,
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: traditional visual space money wealth,
[23:29] Bob Dobbs: because none of it is as important as the medium itself.
[23:33] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[23:34] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[23:35] Bob Dobbs: When you know that's what's causing everything,
[23:37] Bob Dobbs: that's the engine,
[23:39] Bob Dobbs: you're not going to be impressed with...
[23:43] Bob Dobbs: Michael Bob Dobbs latest novel,
[23:46] Bob Dobbs: or who's someone you got there in Canada?
[23:51] Bob Dobbs: The husband of Adrian Clarkson,
[23:53] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[23:54] Bob Dobbs: Saul somebody or something.
[23:55] Cameron McEwen: Black,
[23:57] Cameron McEwen: isn't it?
[23:58] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[23:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.
[23:59] Cameron McEwen: I was thinking of somebody else.
[24:04] Bob Dobbs: He's a commentator.
[24:06] Bob Dobbs: He gets to pontificate every now and then on CBC or something.
[24:10] Bob Dobbs: I understand.
[24:10] Bob Dobbs: I haven't seen it in 30 years,
[24:12] Cameron McEwen: but I remember that stuff when I was in Toronto.
[24:16] Cameron McEwen: So let's not go too fast here because there's a lot of interesting stuff in what you're saying.
[24:21] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[24:22] Cameron McEwen: One thing is,
[24:24] Cameron McEwen: in the quote from Forces Magazine,
[24:27] Cameron McEwen: Notice how,
[24:30] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if
[24:31] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan misspoke or if there was a problem with translation or whatever,
[24:36] Cameron McEwen: but he starts off by saying the new art form,
[24:40] Cameron McEwen: which is a singular,
[24:41] Cameron McEwen: the new art form,
[24:43] Cameron McEwen: and then he ends up in the same sentence talking about the new art forms,
[24:48] Cameron McEwen: plural.
[24:49] Cameron McEwen: And sometimes when you're talking,
[24:51] Cameron McEwen: you use a singular and sometimes you use a plural.
[24:54] Cameron McEwen: And I think it's really important that people understand.
[24:57] Cameron McEwen: standard in the singular.
[24:59] Cameron McEwen: Usually I like to pluralize things,
[25:01] Cameron McEwen: but here when he's talking about the new art form,
[25:06] Cameron McEwen: he's saying not the movies,
[25:08] Cameron McEwen: not drama,
[25:11] Cameron McEwen: not media in the sense of paper or radio or TV or something.
[25:17] Cameron McEwen: So he's saying the new art form envelops or develops or comes out of or is
[25:26] Cameron McEwen: the ground of all of these things.
[25:29] Cameron McEwen: And so he's raising the question of,
[25:31] Cameron McEwen: well,
[25:31] Cameron McEwen: what is an art form if it's not this one,
[25:35] Cameron McEwen: not that one?
[25:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[25:37] Bob Dobbs: What is the word media referring to?
[25:40] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[25:41] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[25:42] Cameron McEwen: And so then when you say that
[25:45] Cameron McEwen: Trump the artist that has most influenced
[25:57] Cameron McEwen: our whatever,
[26:00] Cameron McEwen: our what can you say,
[26:03] Cameron McEwen: our consciousness of ourselves or has raised the question of our anti-environment in a way that no other artist has been able to do.
[26:16] Cameron McEwen: I think those are really interesting statements that you're making there.
[26:20] Cameron McEwen: But the big question is,
[26:24] Cameron McEwen: how does the word is?
[26:26] Cameron McEwen: function.
[26:27] Bob Dobbs: Because the new art form is all the media together,
[26:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[26:31] Bob Dobbs: a little propaganda idea.
[26:33] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,
[26:35] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[26:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:35] Bob Dobbs: so it can be singular plural.
[26:37] Bob Dobbs: The new art form is all the media themselves,
[26:40] Bob Dobbs: and then he names media,
[26:41] Bob Dobbs: and they are not the art forms.
[26:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[26:44] Bob Dobbs: It's the whole thing,
[26:45] Bob Dobbs: collectivity,
[26:47] Bob Dobbs: the global theater massage is the media singular.
[26:54] Bob Dobbs: But it's made up of everything that were analog media.
[26:58] Bob Dobbs: And it is the anti-environment.
[27:02] Bob Dobbs: Because the ground,
[27:04] Bob Dobbs: there is no content in the ground.
[27:06] Bob Dobbs: It's invisible.
[27:07] Bob Dobbs: It's,
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[27:09] Bob Dobbs: ineffable.
[27:10] Bob Dobbs: Intangible is the ground,
[27:12] Bob Dobbs: and that's electricity.
[27:15] Cameron McEwen: You don't want to say intangible,
[27:17] Cameron McEwen: I don't think,
[27:18] Cameron McEwen: because it's tactile.
[27:23] Cameron McEwen: in the proper sense,
[27:24] Cameron McEwen: and so it can't be intangible,
[27:26] Cameron McEwen: which means not tactile,
[27:28] Cameron McEwen: right?
[27:28] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: but it's interesting how
[27:30] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt used the word intangibles in Take Today.
[27:36] Bob Dobbs: They use it several times,
[27:37] Bob Dobbs: the intangibles are this or that,
[27:39] Bob Dobbs: or the intangibles are what we can experience,
[27:42] Bob Dobbs: but tangibility we can't find.
[27:44] Bob Dobbs: They play with it.
[27:46] Bob Dobbs: So sometimes I'll put in intangible to indicate tactility.
[27:52] Bob Dobbs: Because tactility is not a sense.
[27:53] Cameron McEwen: No,
[27:53] Cameron McEwen: no,
[27:53] Cameron McEwen: that makes good sense to me.
[27:54] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[27:56] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[27:56] Cameron McEwen: But doesn't that get down to this whole question of is?
[28:00] Cameron McEwen: And I don't mean to raise it in the sense that Bill Clinton did.
[28:06] Cameron McEwen: But when you say that
[28:11] Cameron McEwen: Trump something or the new art form is,
[28:17] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're doing is you are indicating.
[28:21] Cameron McEwen: a difficulty and a question implicated in is,
[28:29] Cameron McEwen: implicated in how being operates in a human being,
[28:36] Cameron McEwen: but also in the being of the world,
[28:39] Cameron McEwen: or the being of language or whatever.
[28:42] Cameron McEwen: And that kind of transitivity of being
[28:51] Cameron McEwen: is a very difficult but interesting question.
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: didn't McLuhan do what tetrad is?
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: No,
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: no,
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: maybe.
[29:03] Bob Dobbs: What would he have called it?
[29:07] Bob Dobbs: It might be in Laws of Media or the Global Village.
[29:11] Bob Dobbs: Is there another word for is?
[29:14] Bob Dobbs: What is it called?
[29:15] Cameron McEwen: That's a great question.
[29:16] Cameron McEwen: That is a great question.
[29:18] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[29:18] Bob Dobbs: he does verbum,
[29:20] Bob Dobbs: which is interesting.
[29:21] Bob Dobbs: The tetrad verbum,
[29:22] Bob Dobbs: which is more like a grunt,
[29:24] Bob Dobbs: right?
[29:25] Bob Dobbs: It's before civilized language or...
[29:29] Bob Dobbs: language per se.
[29:30] Bob Dobbs: It's like if you imagine early humans,
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: if there were such a state,
[29:38] Bob Dobbs: early humans,
[29:38] Bob Dobbs: cavemen or something,
[29:40] Bob Dobbs: they live in such a tactile,
[29:43] Bob Dobbs: involved way that the grunting communicates a lot.
[29:47] Bob Dobbs: They're just pointed.
[29:48] Bob Dobbs: They're just pushed.
[29:50] Bob Dobbs: It's banged,
[29:51] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[29:52] Bob Dobbs: very abrupt encounter with matter.
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: That's tactility.
[29:59] Bob Dobbs: the original until there was nobody had to make sense of some story probably before story do you know what i mean they probably did hallucinate that they were making rain or something the stars were in their eyes stuff
[30:17] Bob Dobbs: like that um and uh i once said that cavemen when they died they didn't know they died it was so similar to being alive
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: That intangible,
[30:31] Bob Dobbs: I think that's intangible.
[30:34] Cameron McEwen: It's intangible for our thinking because the tactility or the tangibility is so present that it's something that we no longer understand because for us that
[30:50] Cameron McEwen: has dissipated.
[30:54] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger has some notion of this too.
[30:57] Cameron McEwen: People often criticize him for concentrating more and more on the pre-Socratics and saying that there was something going on with the pre-Socratics that gets lost.
[31:09] Cameron McEwen: But I think McLuhan whole idea of the Gutenberg Galaxy comes close to that,
[31:15] Cameron McEwen: because the idea is that when human beings begin to introduce efficiency into their lives,
[31:24] Cameron McEwen: that always comes at a loss.
[31:26] Cameron McEwen: So letters are extremely important in human history,
[31:33] Cameron McEwen: but with all of the advantages that letters bring to intelligibility,
[31:43] Cameron McEwen: there's also a loss.
[31:44] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[31:47] Cameron McEwen: It's a kind of abbreviation of speech.
[31:50] Cameron McEwen: And so then throughout history...
[31:54] Cameron McEwen: the technological developments are always abbreviations.
[31:58] Cameron McEwen: They're ways of saying,
[31:59] Cameron McEwen: well,
[31:59] Cameron McEwen: look,
[32:00] Cameron McEwen: if you just concentrate on this particular feature,
[32:05] Cameron McEwen: then everything becomes easier to understand.
[32:08] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[32:08] Cameron McEwen: yes,
[32:09] Cameron McEwen: it becomes easier to understand or easier to make or easier to sell or whatever,
[32:16] Cameron McEwen: but there is a loss associated with that.
[32:20] Cameron McEwen: There's never pure profit.
[32:22] Cameron McEwen: Profit and loss always balance out,
[32:25] Cameron McEwen: and
[32:27] Cameron McEwen: Western civilization is the story of forgetting about the losses and just emphasizing the profits,
[32:34] Cameron McEwen: right?
[32:35] Cameron McEwen: And we've now come to the end of that.
[32:39] Cameron McEwen: So when McLuhan thinks that we've gone back into caveman society with grunting and stuff,
[32:45] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is we've come to a point where we have to get back into.
[32:52] Cameron McEwen: the kind of tangibility that humans knew in the beginning.
[32:59] Cameron McEwen: That's what human beings Marchand always will be.
[33:04] Cameron McEwen: But we've come so far away from it that we've lost our ground,
[33:08] Cameron McEwen: we've lost our reality,
[33:10] Cameron McEwen: and we're now going to destroy ourselves if we don't get back to that fundamental tactility,
[33:19] Cameron McEwen: tangibility.
[33:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[33:21] Bob Dobbs: so...
[33:23] Bob Dobbs: In the earliest periods,
[33:24] Bob Dobbs: the aboriginal periods,
[33:26] Bob Dobbs: there was no gain or loss.
[33:29] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[33:30] Bob Dobbs: There was no difference in experience.
[33:32] Bob Dobbs: It just was frequencies or variations or nuances or something.
[33:37] Bob Dobbs: But once you get into explicitness,
[33:40] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan's word,
[33:42] Bob Dobbs: you start to spell out some efficient level,
[33:45] Bob Dobbs: like you were describing,
[33:46] Bob Dobbs: then you've got something,
[33:48] Bob Dobbs: and therefore you're going to lose something.
[33:50] Bob Dobbs: But if you weren't...
[33:51] Bob Dobbs: getting anything.
[33:53] Bob Dobbs: It didn't require a sense of getting something,
[33:58] Bob Dobbs: which the tactile existence would be.
[34:03] Bob Dobbs: That's why we have gotten back to that because nobody gains or loses in this economy.
[34:11] Bob Dobbs: You make a lot of money,
[34:12] Bob Dobbs: you've got to give it back.
[34:14] Bob Dobbs: If you have no money,
[34:15] Bob Dobbs: you'll get some.
[34:16] Bob Dobbs: Someone will give you some as welfare.
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: So
[34:19] Bob Dobbs: I think we're in that early condition of extreme tactility, and this is our existence today.
[34:28] Bob Dobbs: And that's why everybody is so obsessed with texting or connecting.
[34:33] Bob Dobbs: digitally and having something be outside themselves,
[34:37] Bob Dobbs: even though it's very temporary.
[34:38] Cameron McEwen: But notice how you say,
[34:41] Cameron McEwen: it is our existence,
[34:44] Cameron McEwen: right?
[34:44] Cameron McEwen: So you have a double is,
[34:45] Cameron McEwen: is there,
[34:46] Cameron McEwen: because existence is.
[34:48] Cameron McEwen: So you say it is our existence,
[34:51] Cameron McEwen: but it's an existence in which people are,
[34:54] Cameron McEwen: there's the word is again,
[34:56] Cameron McEwen: an existence in which people are,
[34:58] Cameron McEwen: but they don't know that they're there.
[35:01] Cameron McEwen: And they...
[35:02] Cameron McEwen: They have no idea about the ground rules of being there.
[35:06] Cameron McEwen: Another is in being.
[35:09] Cameron McEwen: So you have an existence in which people are,
[35:14] Cameron McEwen: where they have no idea about what they're doing and where they're headed and what this all means.
[35:22] Cameron McEwen: And so we're dominated by a question that we don't acknowledge.
[35:29] Cameron McEwen: would
[35:30] Cameron McEwen: And here's McLuhan kind of beating away,
[35:32] Cameron McEwen: saying,
[35:33] Cameron McEwen: let's acknowledge the question.
[35:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:37] Bob Dobbs: and he would say the interrogative had taken over life.
[35:40] Bob Dobbs: People were engaging in questioning more and more because the big question was looming over them,
[35:45] Bob Dobbs: but they couldn't hear it.
[35:47] Bob Dobbs: So they did a lot of little questions.
[35:49] Cameron McEwen: You could even say that take today names all those things that we were just talking about.
[35:57] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[35:57] Cameron McEwen: Take today means.
[35:59] Cameron McEwen: Today is in question.
[36:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[36:02] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[36:04] Bob Dobbs: Is there a today?
[36:06] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[36:07] Bob Dobbs: What was it?
[36:09] Bob Dobbs: Western Goals is our permanent address.
[36:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[36:14] Bob Dobbs: No today.
[36:15] Bob Dobbs: It's Western Goals.
[36:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[36:17] Cameron McEwen: But notice that between Western Goals and morrow,
[36:21] Cameron McEwen: there is a medium.
[36:25] Cameron McEwen: Western Goals and morrow get hyphenated in some way.
[36:29] Cameron McEwen: So the medium is the message names the dynamic of yestermorrow and the dynamic of yestermorrow is is tactility and tactility is the fog of the present between
[36:47] Cameron McEwen: yestermorrow that we live but don't know.
[36:50] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[36:51] Bob Dobbs: And so that's why McLuhan said he got around by feeling like a blind man with this little stick.
[36:57] Bob Dobbs: He'd be tapping things.
[36:59] Bob Dobbs: find out where he is temporarily so he can then get to the next part.
[37:05] Bob Dobbs: So all that is in this tremendous quote.
[37:10] Bob Dobbs: And,
[37:10] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[37:11] Bob Dobbs: nobody knew the quote.
[37:14] Bob Dobbs: Nobody read
[37:15] Bob Dobbs: Hydro-Quebec.
[37:17] Bob Dobbs: Maybe a couple of executives got it,
[37:18] Bob Dobbs: but we didn't hear from them.
[37:20] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have their minds blown or didn't tell anybody.
[37:24] Bob Dobbs: But if you knew that quote,
[37:25] Bob Dobbs: so how did they find that?
[37:28] Bob Dobbs: Either Barry Nevitt gave it to me,
[37:30] Bob Dobbs: or I found it in the McLuhan archives when I did it in 1980.
[37:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[37:37] Bob Dobbs: the end of 1980.
[37:40] Bob Dobbs: But it's a...
[37:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[37:41] Bob Dobbs: have you ever seen...
[37:42] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a copy of this magazine,
[37:44] Bob Dobbs: this particular issue?
[37:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[37:45] Cameron McEwen: I do.
[37:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[37:46] Bob Dobbs: it's got a big article on Marcuse,
[37:49] Bob Dobbs: and a big article on Galbraith,
[37:51] Bob Dobbs: is it?
[37:51] Bob Dobbs: I think it's Galbraith.
[37:53] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan.
[37:54] Bob Dobbs: Three heavies.
[37:55] Bob Dobbs: And,
[37:56] Bob Dobbs: uh...
[37:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says a lot of interesting things there in there that you don't see otherwise.
[38:01] Bob Dobbs: Like he said,
[38:01] Bob Dobbs: the real art form of the moon shots should have been the
[38:07] Bob Dobbs: NASA headquarters monitoring the pressure measurements of the astronauts in their suits.
[38:13] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that?
[38:15] Cameron McEwen: No,
[38:15] Cameron McEwen: I don't,
[38:16] Cameron McEwen: but that's an interesting...
[38:18] Bob Dobbs: The drama of what their bodies were going through as they were flying to the moon.
[38:24] Bob Dobbs: That's what he said.
[38:26] Bob Dobbs: was the real drama of the show,
[38:28] Bob Dobbs: and they missed it.
[38:29] Cameron McEwen: But notice that what you're talking about of the astronauts in their suits is exactly what we've been talking about in our whole conversation.
[38:39] Cameron McEwen: The whole conversation of Culture Is Our Business has to do with the atmospheric pressure on contemporary society that
[38:50] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would measure,
[38:52] Cameron McEwen: but nobody is paying any attention to.
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[38:56] Bob Dobbs: And we now are on the edge of a digital,
[39:00] Bob Dobbs: some people think,
[39:01] Bob Dobbs: dictatorship where everybody will...
[39:03] Bob Dobbs: may not get a chip,
[39:04] Bob Dobbs: but they will have their smartphone monitoring their bodies because they'll have become an astronaut to the extreme.
[39:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[39:13] Cameron McEwen: well,
[39:14] Cameron McEwen: this has already happened,
[39:15] Cameron McEwen: of course.
[39:16] Cameron McEwen: This is the future we can see because it's the present.
[39:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[39:20] Bob Dobbs: So,
[39:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan again was describing the drama that was coming,
[39:26] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[39:26] Bob Dobbs: 50 years before.
[39:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:28] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[39:29] Bob Dobbs: And that's very impressive because nobody else was even near that.
[39:34] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't even say those things.
[39:35] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't understand how relevant they were.
[39:37] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't think of making them look stupid to talk that way.
[39:42] Cameron McEwen: Notice the
[39:43] Cameron McEwen: Forces Magazine article is 1973.
[39:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[39:48] Cameron McEwen: And he says avant-garde is not in hockey nor in baseball.
[39:52] Cameron McEwen: But in 1953,
[39:55] Cameron McEwen: I think it was,
[39:55] Cameron McEwen: or it could have been 1952 even,
[39:58] Cameron McEwen: he talks about baseball as culture.
[40:02] Cameron McEwen: He has that
[40:04] Cameron McEwen: CBC piece on baseball as culture.
[40:08] Cameron McEwen: So he was around 1950,
[40:13] Cameron McEwen: was already very conscious of the fact that there's nothing that is not culture.
[40:20] Bob Dobbs: And he also understood the late state of the human condition because he was saying,
[40:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[40:24] Bob Dobbs: we were in 1984 and 1934.
[40:29] Bob Dobbs: You couldn't tell people how polluted everything was because,
[40:32] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[40:32] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[40:32] Bob Dobbs: we'll just go to the moon and live there.
[40:34] Bob Dobbs: You remember that quote?
[40:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[40:36] Cameron McEwen: that's from a letter to Pound.
[40:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[40:39] Bob Dobbs: that kind of talk.
[40:40] Bob Dobbs: It was more science fiction than whatever
[40:43] Bob Dobbs: Philip K.
[40:44] Bob Dobbs: Dick and the rest of them were coming up with.
[40:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[40:48] Cameron McEwen: so what he was saying in that particular letter is that we don't have to worry about the fact that we're losing our topsoil.
[40:57] Cameron McEwen: We'll just go and grow everything on the moon.
[41:01] Bob Dobbs: Just move down the street.
[41:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[41:05] Cameron McEwen: The
[41:08] Cameron McEwen: United States and Canada have ridiculous environmental laws about plastics,
[41:17] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[41:17] Cameron McEwen: or about medicines,
[41:21] Cameron McEwen: where what we say is we'll approve anything.
[41:25] Cameron McEwen: And then if there's some problem in the future,
[41:28] Cameron McEwen: then we'll fix it then.
[41:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[41:31] Cameron McEwen: It's ridiculous,
[41:32] Cameron McEwen: right?
[41:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[41:33] Cameron McEwen: So if you introduce problems that either can't be fixed or impoverish you or kill everybody in order to fix them,
[41:43] Cameron McEwen: right?
[41:45] Cameron McEwen: So this is another instance of how we have to get back into the caveman mentality because they weren't interested in...
[41:55] Cameron McEwen: efficiencies,
[41:56] Cameron McEwen: right?
[41:58] Cameron McEwen: They are living in a present that is satisfactory and it does not have efficient abbreviations because they don't make sense.
[42:13] Cameron McEwen: That is where we need to go by having been,
[42:18] Cameron McEwen: but we don't know that.
[42:22] Cameron McEwen: Maybe that's what the The...
[42:27] Cameron McEwen: dark matter is or what the unknown need.
[42:35] Bob Dobbs: It's what CERN is discovering.
[42:38] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[42:39] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: it's scaring them.
[42:42] Bob Dobbs: They shut down every now and then.
[42:43] Bob Dobbs: They do a little media fast.
[42:45] Bob Dobbs: Let's back off.
[42:46] Bob Dobbs: This is getting strange.
[42:48] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[42:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[42:49] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[42:49] Cameron McEwen: the machine always needs to be updated.
[42:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[42:52] Cameron McEwen: The machine is the ultimate tool.
[42:54] Cameron McEwen: tomorrow,
[42:55] Cameron McEwen: but it's always out of date.
[42:57] Bob Dobbs: So
[42:58] Bob Dobbs: CERN,
[42:59] Bob Dobbs: CERN is not the avant-garde.
[43:02] Bob Dobbs: The tech body is the avant-garde,
[43:04] Bob Dobbs: the new McLuhan would say.
[43:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[43:09] Bob Dobbs: And remember,
[43:09] Bob Dobbs: he says he Wright cartoons,
[43:11] Bob Dobbs: which are bounding lines,
[43:13] Bob Dobbs: generalities.
[43:14] Bob Dobbs: Eric once said,
[43:15] Bob Dobbs: we specialize in generalisms.
[43:17] Bob Dobbs: So general outlines are cartoons,
[43:19] Bob Dobbs: right?
[43:22] Bob Dobbs: Don't waste time on the details.
[43:24] Bob Dobbs: So when you look at hot and cold,
[43:28] Bob Dobbs: these two terms and the two shapes,
[43:31] Bob Dobbs: two different anti-environment,
[43:32] Bob Dobbs: he is writing cartoons.
[43:34] Bob Dobbs: Just like people didn't recognize what Finnegans Wake was,
[43:38] Bob Dobbs: nobody knew that McLuhan,
[43:39] Bob Dobbs: when he presented himself in a book form,
[43:41] Bob Dobbs: that that was a cartoon that he was writing.
[43:43] Bob Dobbs: And he actually described Mechanical Bride as that,
[43:45] Bob Dobbs: as a new kind of science fiction,
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: where the ads and the comics were the content.
[43:55] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that what he said to his mother?
[43:58] Bob Dobbs: They were the characters,
[43:59] Bob Dobbs: the ads and the comics themselves.
[44:01] Bob Dobbs: That's the media as the...
[44:05] Bob Dobbs: Drama.
[44:06] Bob Dobbs: They're the people.
[44:08] Bob Dobbs: That's Postman.
[44:10] Bob Dobbs: That's Anthropomorphic Physical.
[44:11] Bob Dobbs: It's Posthuman.
[44:14] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[44:15] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[44:15] Cameron McEwen: And all of his books raise the question of,
[44:21] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[44:21] Cameron McEwen: what is the text and what is the quotation?
[44:26] Cameron McEwen: Especially in
[44:28] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg Galaxy,
[44:29] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[44:30] Cameron McEwen: where he got the award for Canadian writing.
[44:32] Cameron McEwen: About half the book isn't his writing.
[44:34] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[44:36] Cameron McEwen: And lots of Gutenberg Galaxy,
[44:39] Cameron McEwen: it's very,
[44:39] Cameron McEwen: very hard to understand if it's McLuhan or somebody else.
[44:44] Cameron McEwen: And it's not only hard to understand because the writing goes seamlessly from McLuhan to somebody else,
[44:54] Cameron McEwen: but also the way the book is set up.
[44:57] Cameron McEwen: The book is set up so that sometimes it's very clear about what's a quotation and what isn't.
[45:03] Cameron McEwen: But other times...
[45:05] Cameron McEwen: that distinction is blurred.
[45:07] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: No,
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: I get an important point there.
[45:10] Bob Dobbs: In
[45:11] Bob Dobbs: Explorations, I think,
[45:12] Bob Dobbs: number five,
[45:13] Bob Dobbs: radio versus TV,
[45:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[45:16] Bob Dobbs: that article.
[45:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[45:18] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[45:18] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[45:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[45:19] Bob Dobbs: if that's the one,
[45:20] Bob Dobbs: though it might be media or sports or something,
[45:23] Bob Dobbs: do you have your,
[45:24] Bob Dobbs: sitting there on the shelf,
[45:25] Bob Dobbs: your Explorations?
[45:26] Cameron McEwen: No,
[45:27] Cameron McEwen: no.
[45:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[45:28] Bob Dobbs: well,
[45:29] Bob Dobbs: go to five or six and get the main McLuhan essay.
[45:35] Bob Dobbs: And he's writing at the end,
[45:38] Bob Dobbs: he's making a statement,
[45:39] Bob Dobbs: and it merges into a section of Finnegans Wake.
[45:42] Bob Dobbs: There's no difference,
[45:43] Bob Dobbs: no punctuation.
[45:45] Bob Dobbs: And
[45:46] Bob Dobbs: I pointed this out to Eric,
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: and I said,
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: he intended that.
[45:50] Bob Dobbs: In other words,
[45:50] Bob Dobbs: he was writing Finnegans Wake.
[45:53] Bob Dobbs: And so he merged it with the actual Finnegans Wake at the very end.
[45:57] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[45:57] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[45:58] Bob Dobbs: no,
[45:58] Bob Dobbs: no,
[45:58] Bob Dobbs: that's a mistake.
[45:59] Bob Dobbs: That's,
[45:59] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[46:00] Bob Dobbs: editorial mistake.
[46:01] Bob Dobbs: He didn't get it.
[46:02] Bob Dobbs: And you did.
[46:03] Bob Dobbs: You just confirmed it by your noticing him doing that in other places.
[46:08] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[46:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[46:10] Cameron McEwen: I don't have the essay in front of me that you're talking about,
[46:14] Cameron McEwen: but you can see that in something like that,
[46:17] Cameron McEwen: what he's doing is he's taking his own writing and he's putting it in Finnegans Wake.
[46:22] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,
[46:24] Cameron McEwen: he's taking Finnegans Wake and putting it in his writing.
[46:27] Cameron McEwen: So what he's doing is he's introducing a dynamic that...
[46:32] Cameron McEwen: That is the question.
[46:35] Cameron McEwen: He's introducing an atmosphere that is between us and our spacesuit that we need to become conscious of.
[46:50] Cameron McEwen: Let's say going back into the caveman mentality,
[46:57] Cameron McEwen: but consciously.
[46:59] Cameron McEwen: So as you often point out,
[47:00] Cameron McEwen: it's...
[47:01] Cameron McEwen: doing
[47:02] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake Grace Eckley.
[47:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[47:05] Bob Dobbs: And the,
[47:13] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[47:13] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[47:13] Bob Dobbs: there's no McLuhan in his writing.
[47:17] Bob Dobbs: When he says,
[47:18] Bob Dobbs: I,
[47:18] Bob Dobbs: blah,
[47:18] Bob Dobbs: blah,
[47:19] Bob Dobbs: blah,
[47:19] Bob Dobbs: and Gutenberg Galaxy,
[47:20] Bob Dobbs: that's the book talking.
[47:22] Bob Dobbs: The Gutenberg Galaxy is the book's interpretation and distortion of what's going on in the global theater.
[47:30] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[47:30] Bob Dobbs: there's Posthuman writing and stating something there.
[47:35] Bob Dobbs: The understanding media is taking the tradition of the book and it's categorizing cliche and it's dictionary approach to things.
[47:45] Bob Dobbs: And it says,
[47:47] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[47:48] Bob Dobbs: here's what me,
[47:49] Bob Dobbs: Mr.
[47:49] Bob Dobbs: Book says about what's going on.
[47:51] Bob Dobbs: And you read this dictionary of 33 parts called understanding media.
[47:55] Bob Dobbs: That is the book's response to the electric.
[48:00] Bob Dobbs: Simulation,
[48:01] Bob Dobbs: Matrix,
[48:01] Bob Dobbs: whatever you want to call it in the
[48:03] Bob Dobbs: 60s, the global theater.
[48:08] Cameron McEwen: That's really good.
[48:10] Bob Dobbs: You like that?
[48:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[48:11] Cameron McEwen: of course,
[48:12] Cameron McEwen: because what you're doing is you're pointing out an underlying dialogue.
[48:16] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[48:18] Cameron McEwen: And raising the whole question of what is it to be an author?
[48:25] Cameron McEwen: What is it to be a human subject?
[48:27] Cameron McEwen: What is it to be a human being?
[48:31] Cameron McEwen: And we exist in those questions without raising them.
[48:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[48:36] Bob Dobbs: and there was this interview that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
[48:39] Bob Dobbs: ABC,
[48:40] Bob Dobbs: I think it was.
[48:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[48:42] Bob Dobbs: They did a show on McLuhan in the centenary in 2011,
[48:45] Bob Dobbs: and Andrew was part of the negotiating with the TV people.
[48:48] Bob Dobbs: We interviewed them on McLuhan on Maui,
[48:51] Bob Dobbs: one of the producer ladies.
[48:53] Bob Dobbs: And so watching,
[48:55] Bob Dobbs: they had an old interview they had from 77.
[48:58] Bob Dobbs: And there's McLuhan saying something in public to this crowd of strangers that he never said anywhere else.
[49:05] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[49:06] Bob Dobbs: The media are characters in Finnegans Wake.
[49:10] Bob Dobbs: It's really important.
[49:11] Bob Dobbs: The media are the characters.
[49:14] Bob Dobbs: Television kills telephony in Brothers' broil.
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: You're watching the media,
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: the content of understanding media become a drama,
[49:25] Bob Dobbs: a wrestling match,
[49:26] Bob Dobbs: and they're all engaging each other.
[49:28] Bob Dobbs: That's Finnegans Wake.
[49:29] Bob Dobbs: But then McLuhan says,
[49:30] Bob Dobbs: well,
[49:31] Bob Dobbs: we can clarify this if we let Mr.
[49:33] Bob Dobbs: Book say something.
[49:34] Bob Dobbs: So Mr.
[49:35] Bob Dobbs: Book comes along,
[49:36] Bob Dobbs: or Mrs.
[49:36] Bob Dobbs: Book,
[49:37] Bob Dobbs: and puts everything in order for visual space,
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: for visually Posthuman.
[49:42] Bob Dobbs: And that's Gutenberg
[49:43] Bob Dobbs: Galaxy,
[49:44] Bob Dobbs: and Understanding Media,
[49:45] Bob Dobbs: which is also an appealing,
[49:47] Bob Dobbs: another subtlety in the whole thing.
[49:49] Bob Dobbs: So then McLuhan would,
[49:54] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[49:54] Bob Dobbs: so why do his books repeat themselves so often?
[49:58] Bob Dobbs: Because they're targeting different aspects of the global theater.
[50:02] Bob Dobbs: Like Take a Day is targeting politicians and economists.
[50:06] Bob Dobbs: Laws and Media is targeting scientists.
[50:10] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business is targeting advertising.
[50:13] Bob Dobbs: War and Peace may be news.
[50:16] Bob Dobbs: War and Peace in the Global Village.
[50:20] Bob Dobbs: Each book is saying,
[50:23] Bob Dobbs: no,
[50:25] Bob Dobbs: each book is the book's response to different parts of the corporate entities of the global theater.
[50:32] Bob Dobbs: And that's the drama,
[50:34] Bob Dobbs: the Broadway play that he's making.
[50:37] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't have to be on Broadway.
[50:39] Bob Dobbs: He is making a drama,
[50:41] Bob Dobbs: a play of all the things he does.
[50:44] Bob Dobbs: So in the morning he goes on
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: Robert Fulford morning show and talks TV style.
[50:51] Bob Dobbs: Then he goes and does a magazine article at noon hour.
[50:53] Bob Dobbs: So the magazine gets to say something.
[50:55] Bob Dobbs: And then he adds to his book that night that hasn't come out yet.
[51:00] Bob Dobbs: And then he goes to a seminar and talks in person so speech can have a presentation.
[51:06] Bob Dobbs: His Monday night seminars were the role of speech in the drama,
[51:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[51:10] Bob Dobbs: chemical body speech.
[51:14] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[51:14] Cameron McEwen: So
[51:17] Cameron McEwen: I would just add to that that if we say wire is books repeating each other or within a single book.
[51:28] Cameron McEwen: Why is there so much repetition?
[51:30] Cameron McEwen: Or why is there this error?
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: Or why do we not know where that quote came from?
[51:35] Cameron McEwen: And all that sort of stuff.
[51:38] Cameron McEwen: All of those are book values.
[51:43] Cameron McEwen: The whole question is,
[51:45] Cameron McEwen: what is the value of the book?
[51:47] Cameron McEwen: Or what is even a book as a reality?
[51:53] Cameron McEwen: What is it?
[51:54] Cameron McEwen: What is the atmosphere of a book?
[51:58] Cameron McEwen: What is a book or a book atmosphere all about anyway?
[52:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is trying to sort of feel himself around in those sorts of questions where he doesn't know the answer,
[52:14] Cameron McEwen: but not knowing the answer is where we are today.
[52:19] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[52:20] Bob Dobbs: So.
[52:28] Bob Dobbs: What was interesting when you get to personally be around McLuhan,
[52:32] Bob Dobbs: like in the Monday Night Seminars,
[52:33] Bob Dobbs: and observe him,
[52:35] Bob Dobbs: he would laugh in odd places,
[52:38] Bob Dobbs: okay?
[52:40] Bob Dobbs: Laughs,
[52:41] Bob Dobbs: chuckle,
[52:42] Bob Dobbs: and you wouldn't know what the hell is he laughing at.
[52:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[52:46] Bob Dobbs: because he was so detached from his drama,
[52:50] Bob Dobbs: he had to be to be the producer of it,
[52:53] Bob Dobbs: the co-anesthetic position,
[52:55] Bob Dobbs: he was at the center of it.
[52:58] Bob Dobbs: All this drama is happening to people and they're totally unaware of it,
[53:01] Bob Dobbs: of what he's performing.
[53:03] Bob Dobbs: He's infiltrated decent society,
[53:05] Bob Dobbs: got his PhD,
[53:07] Bob Dobbs: get away with a lot.
[53:08] Bob Dobbs: And if you're really paying close attention to him,
[53:11] Bob Dobbs: he is laughing obliquely.
[53:14] Bob Dobbs: He's laughing at you,
[53:16] Bob Dobbs: but you don't know what the joke is.
[53:19] Bob Dobbs: You don't know what he's thinking of that he's presenting to you,
[53:23] Bob Dobbs: what he has created for you to be lost in.
[53:26] Bob Dobbs: And so he will...
[53:28] Bob Dobbs: Smile and smirk oddly.
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: You probably weren't around enough to see that.
[53:32] Bob Dobbs: But he was like a parallel world ghost watching us.
[53:37] Bob Dobbs: Do you see what I'm saying?
[53:39] Cameron McEwen: I agree with it.
[53:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[53:40] Cameron McEwen: well,
[53:40] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[53:41] Cameron McEwen: But I think you're using the word produce.
[53:45] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about
[53:46] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan producing something,
[53:48] Cameron McEwen: and then later you said he created something.
[53:51] Cameron McEwen: But
[53:51] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he was doing a production or a creation than the usual.
[53:57] Cameron McEwen: understanding of these things.
[53:59] Bob Dobbs: No,
[53:59] Bob Dobbs: not as a commercial product or as a beginning.
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: No,
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: no,
[54:02] Cameron McEwen: certainly not.
[54:04] Cameron McEwen: But not a production or a creation in the sense of what artists usually are taken to do.
[54:15] Cameron McEwen: It's something that you,
[54:17] Cameron McEwen: I would say,
[54:18] Cameron McEwen: he let happen.
[54:20] Cameron McEwen: And that's production in a new sense.
[54:23] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[54:24] Cameron McEwen: To let happen or to let be.
[54:26] Cameron McEwen: And therefore his chuckling and his laughter.
[54:32] Cameron McEwen: would be odd if you were trying to figure out what he was doing in the sense of a usual production.
[54:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:41] Cameron McEwen: But of course,
[54:42] Cameron McEwen: that wasn't what was going on.
[54:45] Cameron McEwen: And his laughter or chuckling had to do with what was going on,
[54:50] Cameron McEwen: but not as a usual production.
[54:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[54:54] Bob Dobbs: In a way,
[54:56] Bob Dobbs: he was allowing so much to happen.
[54:59] Bob Dobbs: And the authorities,
[55:00] Bob Dobbs: like the governor general,
[55:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[55:02] Bob Dobbs: presented in parliament that McLuhan needed to be censured.
[55:05] Bob Dobbs: Remember that?
[55:06] Bob Dobbs: Late 69 or so?
[55:08] Bob Dobbs: No.
[55:09] Bob Dobbs: They made an issue out of him.
[55:10] Bob Dobbs: Because what was he doing?
[55:12] Bob Dobbs: He's speaking,
[55:12] Bob Dobbs: saying ideas.
[55:13] Bob Dobbs: There was a lot of turbulence going on.
[55:15] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't doing anything illegal.
[55:17] Bob Dobbs: But they suspected,
[55:18] Bob Dobbs: this guy is big,
[55:21] Bob Dobbs: rude.
[55:22] Bob Dobbs: He's invading our privacy in a way we don't understand.
[55:26] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?
[55:27] Bob Dobbs: He's telling stuff about us that adults should not speak.
[55:31] Bob Dobbs: You know?
[55:32] Bob Dobbs: Adults should not mention this stuff.
[55:33] Bob Dobbs: Kids can't take it.
[55:35] Bob Dobbs: There was that level.
[55:36] Bob Dobbs: It was almost like anti-environment of anarchy.
[55:39] Bob Dobbs: So you would look at cartoons people would make of McLuhan.
[55:42] Bob Dobbs: They were incredible.
[55:45] Bob Dobbs: The distortion or the variety of images they had of McLuhan.
[55:49] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know what he was.
[55:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's because he was this weird ectoplasm,
[55:56] Bob Dobbs: oozing throughout society.
[55:57] Bob Dobbs: Like his mind...
[56:01] Bob Dobbs: If it had a thought,
[56:03] Bob Dobbs: and he didn't necessarily utter it,
[56:05] Bob Dobbs: but just having the thought,
[56:07] Bob Dobbs: because we were in an intimate ESP kind service environment,
[56:10] Bob Dobbs: so inside,
[56:11] Bob Dobbs: he said in the Burroughs review,
[56:13] Bob Dobbs: we're inside each other's digestive system,
[56:15] Bob Dobbs: inside each other's intestines,
[56:17] Bob Dobbs: we're so intimately involved with each other that to think something actually might have a lot more impact than humans would understand.
[56:26] Bob Dobbs: So that his thinking,
[56:28] Bob Dobbs: he just had to think out the drama.
[56:31] Bob Dobbs: Dare to think,
[56:33] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[56:33] Bob Dobbs: well,
[56:34] Bob Dobbs: we've offed ourselves.
[56:35] Bob Dobbs: We're not here anymore.
[56:37] Bob Dobbs: We're now super angels.
[56:38] Bob Dobbs: To think those thoughts was the production part of the guy,
[56:43] Bob Dobbs: the director part.
[56:44] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[56:45] Cameron McEwen: right.
[56:46] Cameron McEwen: I like what you're saying there,
[56:47] Cameron McEwen: but when you say we're super angels or something,
[56:52] Cameron McEwen: it can't be,
[56:53] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[56:53] Cameron McEwen: that you're trying to make some kind of literal identification.
[56:57] Cameron McEwen: I think you're using...
[56:59] Bob Dobbs: I'm using words because I've got to use words.
[57:02] Bob Dobbs: They're way off.
[57:05] Bob Dobbs: What?
[57:06] Bob Dobbs: You think my fallacy is wrong?
[57:07] Bob Dobbs: He admitted it right there.
[57:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[57:10] Cameron McEwen: but the phrase way off is a great one.
[57:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[57:15] Bob Dobbs: way off.
[57:17] Bob Dobbs: We have recordings that Nelson had in class where he'll make asides like that.
[57:23] Bob Dobbs: He'll talk about cliché to archetype.
[57:24] Bob Dobbs: I might have got that backwards.
[57:25] Bob Dobbs: But it didn't matter.
[57:27] Bob Dobbs: He just thought,
[57:27] Bob Dobbs: I might have got that backwards.
[57:28] Bob Dobbs: And the students are trying to take notes to find out Gutenberg Galaxy what is what,
[57:33] Bob Dobbs: right?
[57:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[57:33] Bob Dobbs: what is a cliché as opposed to archetype?
[57:35] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan just says,
[57:36] Bob Dobbs: well,
[57:36] Bob Dobbs: I might have got it backwards.
[57:39] Cameron McEwen: And look how that relates to our talk about cavemen.
[57:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[57:45] Cameron McEwen: Backwards,
[57:46] Cameron McEwen: forwards,
[57:46] Cameron McEwen: we have no idea of which direction we're going in,
[57:51] Cameron McEwen: what direction we ought to go in,
[57:55] Cameron McEwen: what a direction is.
[57:57] Cameron McEwen: No idea about any of that sort of stuff.
[58:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[58:02] Bob Dobbs: he lived it.
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: you're reminding me.
[58:05] Bob Dobbs: He would sit there in his chair at the table,
[58:08] Bob Dobbs: and then there would be a crowd there.
[58:10] Bob Dobbs: But his hands would hang real loosely.
[58:13] Bob Dobbs: And when he moved to get up,
[58:15] Bob Dobbs: it was like he was waterlogged.
[58:18] Bob Dobbs: He slowly sat up,
[58:20] Bob Dobbs: dripping of something.
[58:21] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[58:23] Bob Dobbs: He moved real slowly.
[58:24] Bob Dobbs: Did you see any of that when you were around him?
[58:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[58:29] Cameron McEwen: when I was around him,
[58:31] Cameron McEwen: he was sick.
[58:33] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[58:33] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[58:34] Cameron McEwen: I've increasingly come to think that it must have been 1968.
[58:42] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[58:42] Cameron McEwen: He was very irritable.
[58:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[58:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[58:45] Cameron McEwen: But he was very,
[58:46] Cameron McEwen: very irritable.
[58:47] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[58:48] Cameron McEwen: in Project in 62,
[58:50] Cameron McEwen: he talks about our nerves being outside us.
[58:53] Cameron McEwen: It happened to him.
[58:54] Cameron McEwen: That's how he came across to me.
[58:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[58:57] Bob Dobbs: It happened after the brain surgery.
[58:59] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[58:59] Bob Dobbs: he's super sensitive,
[59:00] Bob Dobbs: but...
[59:01] Bob Dobbs: Maybe,
[59:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[59:02] Bob Dobbs: I'm seeing him in the 70s a few years later regularly,
[59:06] Bob Dobbs: weekly.
[59:08] Bob Dobbs: So really getting to know his body language.
[59:13] Bob Dobbs: And I might have been witnessing the slower waterlogged McLuhan adjusting to these new sound intensities he had gotten used to.
[59:22] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[59:23] Cameron McEwen: I love the images you're using.
[59:25] Bob Dobbs: This waterlogged McLuhan makes a lot of sense to me.
[59:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[59:29] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[59:30] Bob Dobbs: Every now and then he'd be sprightly,
[59:33] Bob Dobbs: though.
[59:34] Bob Dobbs: He's quadrophrenia,
[59:35] Bob Dobbs: man.
[59:35] Bob Dobbs: He was an odd bird.
[59:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[59:39] Cameron McEwen: He was a good athlete when he was a kid.
[59:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:41] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[59:43] Bob Dobbs: So we're making a lot out of this quote here.
[59:45] Bob Dobbs: That's how good it is.
[59:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[59:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: there's tremendous stuff.
[59:51] Bob Dobbs: And he talks about the Kennedy assassination,
[59:54] Bob Dobbs: how the establishment,
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: he's conspiratorial.
[59:56] Bob Dobbs: The establishment killed Kennedy because they tried to change the world.
[59:59] Bob Dobbs: You don't.
[59:59] Bob Dobbs: do that under less redistribution.
[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: You don't try to change the world.
[1:00:03] Bob Dobbs: It's already being so changed.
[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: You've got to find out what changes are happening,
[1:00:07] Bob Dobbs: not impose your dinky little change.
[1:00:11] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: So they deserve to get killed.
[1:00:14] Bob Dobbs: They're a mess.
[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: you can't get away with that.
[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: something like that.
[1:00:19] Bob Dobbs: You're not going to pull that off.
[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: They're going to just kill you and get rid of you.
[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: It's like caveman.
[1:00:24] Cameron McEwen: It relates Trump,
[1:00:26] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: What's interesting is that Trump...
[1:00:29] Bob Dobbs: still going.
[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: That's something to ponder.
[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: But back to what?
[1:00:36] Bob Dobbs: This quote,
[1:00:37] Bob Dobbs: what is my little blue commentary?
[1:00:41] Bob Dobbs: What do I say about this tremendous quote?
[1:00:47] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[1:00:47] Bob Dobbs: So I say,
[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: people will read this quote and they won't know what the word media refers to because of them.
[1:00:55] Bob Dobbs: The media is the programs.
[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: I brought that up,
[1:00:58] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: And you brought up,
[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: we don't know what the word media refers to.
[1:01:01] Bob Dobbs: So it's right there in my commentary.
[1:01:04] Bob Dobbs: This is another challenge to your perception said in a different way.
[1:01:08] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is referring to all the modern artists,
[1:01:10] Bob Dobbs: Andy Warhol and others,
[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: who were into painting as well as TV shows and other media.
[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: Some of them,
[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: here's what I'm talking about,
[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: Richard Meltzer,
[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: some of them thought wrestling and hockey were a new avant-garde.
[1:01:21] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan saying,
[1:01:21] Bob Dobbs: nope,
[1:01:22] Bob Dobbs: you Easterbrook have no clue what the avant-garde is.
[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good.
[1:01:28] Bob Dobbs: You're scenesters,
[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:01:30] Bob Dobbs: That's what people were.
[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: They were hustlers and scenesters.
[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: And they had to state their identity by oozing their mind.
[1:01:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: look,
[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm paying attention to wrestling while you go to the latest
[1:01:44] Bob Dobbs: John Cage production.
[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: You think you're a sophisticate?
[1:01:48] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:01:48] Bob Dobbs: sophisticates are over here watching wrestling.
[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: But even that was not the avant-garde.
[1:01:54] Cameron McEwen: So the word Ernst Mayr,
[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:01:57] Cameron McEwen: People are listening to this.
[1:02:01] Cameron McEwen: The word is scene,
[1:02:04] Cameron McEwen: as in a movie scene or the scene in a play.
[1:02:10] Cameron McEwen: You have scene stirs,
[1:02:12] Cameron McEwen: which I think is a great word.
[1:02:14] Cameron McEwen: So is that your word?
[1:02:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.
[1:02:18] Bob Dobbs: I think I got it from somewhere.
[1:02:20] Bob Dobbs: Somebody said it.
[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: Maybe McLuhan said it,
[1:02:23] Bob Dobbs: but I don't think McLuhan said it.
[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: But,
[1:02:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: I made it my own.
[1:02:28] Cameron McEwen: I used it.
[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: Nobody was using it.
[1:02:31] Cameron McEwen: The chapter we're reading is on the global theater.
[1:02:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:02:35] Cameron McEwen: And so everything is a scene.
[1:02:37] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:02:38] Cameron McEwen: And everybody participating in the global theater are scene-sters.
[1:02:45] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: To play a role is to be a Ernst Mayr.
[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:02:52] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:02:52] Cameron McEwen: It's to put on a mask.
[1:02:55] Cameron McEwen: I love that word.
[1:02:56] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:02:56] Bob Dobbs: And the Pollstergeists would fight over which scene was the where-it's-at scene.
[1:03:04] Bob Dobbs: So it was a constant fight over what the scene,
[1:03:08] Bob Dobbs: the major scene is.
[1:03:09] Bob Dobbs: And that screws up the economy.
[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: Money can't keep up with that.
[1:03:14] Bob Dobbs: Money loses its control function.
[1:03:17] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:03:18] Bob Dobbs: And so the media ecology that Wall Street did with the Federal Reserve wasn't working anymore because they knew.
[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: economy,
[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: uh,
[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: media ecology had taken over bigger anti-environment that were changing.
[1:03:31] Cameron McEwen: We're talking about 1970.
[1:03:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:03:36] Cameron McEwen: But the,
[1:03:37] Cameron McEwen: the,
[1:03:37] Cameron McEwen: what you're describing is more true today.
[1:03:40] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:03:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:03:42] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: it's,
[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: it's,
[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: it's as McClure,
[1:03:45] Cameron McEwen: uh,
[1:03:45] Cameron McEwen: said over and over again,
[1:03:47] Cameron McEwen: it's the same thing.
[1:03:49] Cameron McEwen: Uh,
[1:03:49] Cameron McEwen: only more.
[1:03:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: Let me repeat what I was about to say.
[1:03:53] Bob Dobbs: I think you remember that line.
[1:03:55] Bob Dobbs: Let me repeat what I was about to say.
[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: iON's always joking about what Bob used to say.
[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: He obviously wasn't saying.
[1:04:04] Bob Dobbs: But what's getting real scary,
[1:04:06] Bob Dobbs: iON says,
[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: is that Bob's beginning to make sense.
[1:04:09] Bob Dobbs: And all I'm doing is saying what I said 50 years ago.
[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: But it is becoming bigger now.
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: What I'm saying in this article in these old quotes,
[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: which I said 40 years ago on the radio,
[1:04:20] Bob Dobbs: it's now kind of that famous letter to Playboy where he says,
[1:04:25] Bob Dobbs: Eliot's auditory imagination is ordinary awareness today.
[1:04:28] Bob Dobbs: But Finnegans Wake is not ordinary awareness yet.
[1:04:31] Bob Dobbs: Nobody's seen that.
[1:04:32] Bob Dobbs: We're now Finnegans Wake.
[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: We're now getting close to what was not normal in...
[1:04:39] Bob Dobbs: The auditory imagination,
[1:04:40] Bob Dobbs: which was cliche awareness in 1970,
[1:04:43] Bob Dobbs: has now become Finnegans Wake,
[1:04:46] Bob Dobbs: as the ordinary awareness.
[1:04:48] Bob Dobbs: This guy was telling me,
[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: a guy in South Africa,
[1:04:51] Bob Dobbs: he never talks about anything with his mother.
[1:04:55] Bob Dobbs: She might have some interesting views in passing,
[1:04:58] Bob Dobbs: but she called him up the other day.
[1:05:00] Bob Dobbs: She's 84 years old.
[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: And she says,
[1:05:03] Bob Dobbs: Michael,
[1:05:04] Bob Dobbs: it's happening.
[1:05:05] Bob Dobbs: It's happening.
[1:05:06] Bob Dobbs: That's all she could say.
[1:05:08] Bob Dobbs: What she meant was whatever he used to say,
[1:05:12] Bob Dobbs: quoting me,
[1:05:13] Bob Dobbs: sounded crazy.
[1:05:15] Bob Dobbs: Now she could see it happening in her South African environment,
[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: in politics,
[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: whatever.
[1:05:21] Bob Dobbs: So the average person is being forced to look at what McLuhan sees.
[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: Again,
[1:05:28] Bob Dobbs: they're doing it by default.
[1:05:29] Bob Dobbs: They don't know how they got there,
[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: but they can't.
[1:05:31] Bob Dobbs: stop seeing it.
[1:05:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:05:34] Cameron McEwen: So you could say that what McLuhan was talking about was far out.
[1:05:42] Cameron McEwen: Anybody who's paying attention to Ukraine and to what
[1:05:49] Cameron McEwen: Ukraine conflict implicates for the entire world,
[1:05:53] Cameron McEwen: for the whole order that we've lived,
[1:05:56] Cameron McEwen: for the whole Federal Reserve System,
[1:06:00] Cameron McEwen: for or...
[1:06:01] Cameron McEwen: democracy,
[1:06:02] Cameron McEwen: all of this sort of stuff is intensely in question.
[1:06:06] Cameron McEwen: And the reporting of the Ukraine conflict is a gigantic attempt to deny what is actually happening,
[1:06:17] Cameron McEwen: but not happening in the sense of what's going on in the war itself,
[1:06:23] Cameron McEwen: but what's happening to us,
[1:06:25] Cameron McEwen: what's happening to the war inside us,
[1:06:28] Cameron McEwen: what is happening to...
[1:06:30] Cameron McEwen: All of the things that we think are going on in our lives and in our societies is suddenly in huge question.
[1:06:40] Cameron McEwen: And the only real question is,
[1:06:43] Cameron McEwen: do we understand the question or not?
[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: is there life before death becoming the big question?
[1:06:50] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:06:51] Bob Dobbs: Not life after death.
[1:06:52] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: I think of people out there in Kansas,
[1:06:57] Bob Dobbs: they hear the news.
[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: Biden just gave $40 billion to Mr.
[1:07:01] Bob Dobbs: Zelensky,
[1:07:03] Bob Dobbs: and there's no Explorations of what it's going to be used for.
[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: And nothing's going on,
[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: whatever news you hear from there.
[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: So where did that go?
[1:07:10] Cameron McEwen: Where did the $40 billion come from?
[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: where did it come from?
[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: Where did it go?
[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: And how about the poverty in the farm system as the food supply runs out?
[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: Why can't they throw a billion or two there?
[1:07:21] Bob Dobbs: So the average American would look and say,
[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: we're not in America.
[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: They're not serving us.
[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: We aren't recognized.
[1:07:30] Bob Dobbs: We're invisible.
[1:07:31] Bob Dobbs: And they're servicing something else over there.
[1:07:35] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: these are so blatant in the news that nobody can escape these questions or the questions that would come up from the story,
[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: from the item.
[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: So it's absolutely.
[1:07:48] Bob Dobbs: So it's becoming what McLuhan said back in 60s.
[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: He says the 20th century is a surrealistic canvas.
[1:07:55] Bob Dobbs: We're in a surrealistic canvas.
[1:08:00] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:08:00] Cameron McEwen: Where a canvas,
[1:08:03] Cameron McEwen: by definition,
[1:08:04] Cameron McEwen: has a frame,
[1:08:06] Cameron McEwen: but nobody knows what the frame is,
[1:08:09] Cameron McEwen: or how it operates,
[1:08:10] Cameron McEwen: or who the artist is,
[1:08:12] Cameron McEwen: or what the surrealism is all about,
[1:08:15] Cameron McEwen: etc.,
[1:08:17] Cameron McEwen: And that's far more true today than in McLuhan time,
[1:08:23] Cameron McEwen: except what he was trying to talk about is something that doesn't become...
[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: More true in time,
[1:08:29] Cameron McEwen: it's what always is.
[1:08:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:08:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:08:32] Cameron McEwen: The big now,
[1:08:33] Cameron McEwen: as you say.
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: The big now,
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: right.
[1:08:35] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:08:39] Bob Dobbs: do we need to say more about that,
[1:08:41] Bob Dobbs: the blue quote?
[1:08:42] Bob Dobbs: Where was I?
[1:08:43] Bob Dobbs: I think I jumped ahead just a second.
[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: McCool...
[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: I say people will read that quote from Forces and not know what the word media means.
[1:09:01] Bob Dobbs: Everybody thinks they know what media means,
[1:09:03] Bob Dobbs: but the media has become insane.
[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: What are we looking at?
[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: What happened to the frame that the word media gave us?
[1:09:11] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:09:13] Cameron McEwen: It's not just that the media has become insane.
[1:09:18] Cameron McEwen: It's that the media are only possible because there is a deeper medium.
[1:09:29] Cameron McEwen: And so if you're going to understand media,
[1:09:33] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand the deeper medium.
[1:09:37] Bob Dobbs: So you come up with another word.
[1:09:38] Bob Dobbs: That's why I come up with Android Meme as the ground.
[1:09:42] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:09:42] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:09:43] Cameron McEwen: I like that idea.
[1:09:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:09:44] Cameron McEwen: So what I was just going to say is everything has become deliteralized.
[1:09:51] Cameron McEwen: You can't point to things in order to identify them.
[1:09:58] Cameron McEwen: So the psychological decentralization has to do with...
[1:10:05] Cameron McEwen: going beyond Gutenberg,
[1:10:07] Cameron McEwen: because
[1:10:08] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg functions by literalizing.
[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: The start of Gutenberg is with letters,
[1:10:21] Cameron McEwen: that is with the literal.
[1:10:24] Cameron McEwen: So going beyond Gutenberg,
[1:10:28] Cameron McEwen: which is something that's always already happened,
[1:10:31] Cameron McEwen: and it is always already in the big now.
[1:10:36] Cameron McEwen: That psychological decentralization always has a complementary psychological decentralization.
[1:10:45] Cameron McEwen: And what Western civilization did was they capitalized on our ability to forget or to overlook the psychological decentralization that was part of the psychological decentralization.
[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:10:58] Cameron McEwen: And now we have come to a fork in the road where we can no longer.
[1:11:05] Cameron McEwen: overlook the psychological decentralization.
[1:11:10] Cameron McEwen: So we have to undergo the psychological decentralization as our way of becoming conscious of it.
[1:11:17] Cameron McEwen: And that,
[1:11:18] Cameron McEwen: you could say that psychological decentralization can be seen as Finnegans Wake.
[1:11:25] Cameron McEwen: It can be seen as media disappearing as media.
[1:11:32] Cameron McEwen: There's all sorts of ways of
[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: understanding that psychological decentralization,
[1:11:37] Cameron McEwen: but that psychological decentralization is exactly the atmosphere that we were talking about earlier between the cosmonaut and the spacesuit.
[1:11:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:11:48] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: very good.
[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: if you go to the next quote,
[1:11:50] Bob Dobbs: which we've done a hundred times,
[1:11:54] Bob Dobbs: I'll just quickly run through it.
[1:11:56] Bob Dobbs: As you listen to it,
[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: this quote doesn't get to where we're at today.
[1:12:01] Bob Dobbs: This is a situation 50 years ago.
[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: And it is not applicable to today.
[1:12:11] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: just to say it.
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: All technologies are collective unconscious.
[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: All art,
[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: science,
[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: and philosophy are anti-environment controls that are ever merging into the environmental and losing their power to create awareness service environment.
[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: When arts fail to cope with anti-environment by being anti-environment,
[1:12:28] Bob Dobbs: then there can be a shift to a rapid succession of innovations as an anti-environment.
[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: So that's a tremendous statement in the
[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: 60s. Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg and all the art critics,
[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: they should have studied that.
[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: That was the solving the crisis for art criticism.
[1:12:46] Bob Dobbs: We were just quoting Harold
[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: Rosenberg fighting
[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: Hillman Kramer on the show today with Clinton.
[1:12:54] Bob Dobbs: He had a nice little article by
[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: Rosenberg in 1976.
[1:12:59] Bob Dobbs: And you could see it's like...
[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: Somebody overheard a McLuhan seminar and then tries to summarize what McLuhan said,
[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: and it's really weak and erroneous.
[1:13:11] Bob Dobbs: That's how Rosenberg sounds.
[1:13:13] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to point to this quote,
[1:13:14] Bob Dobbs: but he doesn't know this quote,
[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: and he wouldn't know how to understand it if he read it.
[1:13:18] Bob Dobbs: But this quote is clearer.
[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: It Explorations what he's complained about in the art world better than what he's coming up with.
[1:13:25] Bob Dobbs: So then
[1:13:26] Bob Dobbs: I notice my commentary is what's interesting.
[1:13:28] Bob Dobbs: I go,
[1:13:29] Bob Dobbs: People think their heads have an unconscious in them.
[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: in their heads,
[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: in their skulls.
[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: But environment is the unconscious.
[1:13:37] Bob Dobbs: And he's talking about it in the previous quotation four years later,
[1:13:40] Bob Dobbs: 1973,
[1:13:42] Bob Dobbs: still trying to get people to understand him.
[1:13:45] Bob Dobbs: He's saying the media are what you're not conscious of.
[1:13:48] Bob Dobbs: That's the avant-garde.
[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: News is an anti-environment.
[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: People would look at news to ignore the good news of ads.
[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: They would get some dose of bad news that they're surviving.
[1:13:58] Bob Dobbs: The news was anti-environment and an anti-environment,
[1:14:00] Bob Dobbs: but all...
[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment by 1969 were fake anti-environment because nothing could be an anti-environment to the ongoing Niagara Falls of whatever the heck we were living in.
[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: Airs,
[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: there it is,
[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: question,
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: what are we living in?
[1:14:13] Bob Dobbs: An
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment is the first time fake news is being said.
[1:14:17] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was on TV in 69,
[1:14:20] Bob Dobbs: the time he was putting this out saying all news is fake news,
[1:14:22] Bob Dobbs: and the journalists couldn't take it.
[1:14:24] Bob Dobbs: That's Warner Troy.
[1:14:25] Bob Dobbs: The journalists started rudely arguing with McLuhan right there on the TV show.
[1:14:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is being stubborn.
[1:14:31] Bob Dobbs: He's saying,
[1:14:31] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: The journalist responds,
[1:14:33] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm not.
[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: It ended up like that.
[1:14:36] Bob Dobbs: The journalist says,
[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan retorts,
[1:14:38] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:14:38] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:14:39] Bob Dobbs: And that's how the show ended.
[1:14:43] Bob Dobbs: So it was that kind of stuff that started to give McLuhan a bad reputation because people couldn't understand or even believe that he was on the right track.
[1:14:53] Bob Dobbs: They just thought he was getting cranky or something,
[1:14:55] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: But remember that...
[1:14:57] Cameron McEwen: reputation is something manufactured.
[1:15:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:01] Bob Dobbs: he didn't care about that.
[1:15:01] Cameron McEwen: It's not that McLuhan did something and got a reputation.
[1:15:05] Cameron McEwen: He did something that people didn't know how to deal with and didn't want to deal with,
[1:15:10] Cameron McEwen: and therefore they manufactured a reputation that said that we don't have to deal with it.
[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:16] Bob Dobbs: they'd make jokes like,
[1:15:18] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan points out books are obsolete,
[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: but he writes books about it.
[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: how crazy.
[1:15:25] Bob Dobbs: How crazy.
[1:15:29] Bob Dobbs: So then
[1:15:30] Bob Dobbs: I then bring in a quote by Frank Zingrone,
[1:15:34] Bob Dobbs: which is from a collection of McLuhan articles called Essential McLuhan.
[1:15:41] Bob Dobbs: Essential McLuhan quotes edited by Eric and Frank.
[1:15:45] Bob Dobbs: So I have here the selections in part four,
[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: says Frank and Eric,
[1:15:51] Bob Dobbs: and that part four is titled.
[1:15:54] Bob Dobbs: Culture and art,
[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: figure and ground.
[1:15:57] Bob Dobbs: So I say this,
[1:15:58] Bob Dobbs: so Eric,
[1:15:59] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:15:59] Bob Dobbs: Frank writes,
[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: the selections in part four,
[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: culture and art,
[1:16:02] Bob Dobbs: figure and ground,
[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: exemplify McLuhan erudite playfulness.
[1:16:07] Bob Dobbs: He works a trope or two on Carl Jung and sheds new light on the notion of archetypal power.
[1:16:13] Bob Dobbs: Who would have thought anyone could alter the idea of an archetype after the dominance of that area by Carl Jung?
[1:16:19] Bob Dobbs: Art is very serious,
[1:16:21] Bob Dobbs: high-powered play.
[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: and the intrusion of popular culture into the arena of art has been one of the most important new aspects of Western culture.
[1:16:29] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: that's Frank.
[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: It's a little garbled,
[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: but he's trying to come up with some new questions.
[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: I juxtapose that to the scientific statement from page 31 of
[1:16:46] Bob Dobbs: Counterblast, All Technologies are Collective Unconscious,
[1:16:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:16:50] Bob Dobbs: where he goes past Jung.
[1:16:53] Bob Dobbs: That's really profound.
[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: what are we unconscious of?
[1:16:57] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:16:57] Bob Dobbs: it's not some inky,
[1:16:59] Bob Dobbs: dark area inside your brain.
[1:17:01] Bob Dobbs: It's the fact you don't notice the color of your chair in the corner because you live with it every day.
[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: Anti-environment that you live in is cliché,
[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: and that's your unconscious.
[1:17:14] Bob Dobbs: And that's a practical unconscious.
[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: You can get your fingers on that one.
[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: It's not some nebulous thing in your...
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: inside yourself somewhere in your interior landscape.
[1:17:26] Cameron McEwen: Notice when you say get your fingers on it,
[1:17:29] Cameron McEwen: you're implicating tactility.
[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: I got to use tactility when I talk to you.
[1:17:36] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: So you're not talking about anything that's literal.
[1:17:39] Cameron McEwen: You're not talking about your actual fingers getting on an actual thing.
[1:17:45] Cameron McEwen: You're talking about your unacknowledged.
[1:17:49] Cameron McEwen: fingers exercising tactility on unknown things.
[1:17:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:17:55] Bob Dobbs: because,
[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: they ask you,
[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: what's tactility,
[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: Bob?
[1:17:58] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:17:58] Bob Dobbs: it's not a sense.
[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: It's not knowable.
[1:18:01] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[1:18:02] Bob Dobbs: correct.
[1:18:03] Cameron McEwen: And what I find interesting about these sorts of questions in the context Trump is that you're saying,
[1:18:16] Cameron McEwen: if I understand you correctly,
[1:18:17] Cameron McEwen: You understand,
[1:18:18] Cameron McEwen: you're saying that
[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: Trump brings into focus unknown questions that are implicated anti-environment,
[1:18:29] Cameron McEwen: that we're actually living every day.
[1:18:32] Cameron McEwen: and don't know that we're living,
[1:18:34] Cameron McEwen: and of course,
[1:18:36] Cameron McEwen: when we don't know it,
[1:18:37] Cameron McEwen: we can't interrogate it and stuff.
[1:18:40] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:18:41] Cameron McEwen: Trump, somehow,
[1:18:45] Cameron McEwen: as an anti-environment,
[1:18:47] Cameron McEwen: brings these questions up in a way that it's hard to evade.
[1:18:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: First of all,
[1:18:55] Bob Dobbs: he gets your attention because his grammar is so bad.
[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't even finish his thoughts,
[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[1:19:01] Bob Dobbs: He just lets you fall into them.
[1:19:06] Cameron McEwen: That's good,
[1:19:07] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:19:07] Cameron McEwen: Because
[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're saying there is that he is using grammar in a new way.
[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: Which is kind of a funny idea because grammar is supposed to be some sort of ground rule.
[1:19:30] Cameron McEwen: I'm
[1:19:31] Cameron McEwen: Going against grammar is a sin.
[1:19:36] Cameron McEwen: You can't go against grammar and use language properly.
[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:19:41] Cameron McEwen: And so here's somebody going against grammar in a way that raises questions about grammar.
[1:19:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:19:48] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: I had a point there.
[1:19:55] Bob Dobbs: He got so much attention.
[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: He still got a lot of attention.
[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: And how do you get attention?
[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: You have to involve the audience.
[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: You have to have them fill in what you're not completing,
[1:20:04] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: And he was a SubGenius at presenting himself as an incomplete speaker in other ways,
[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: too.
[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: So everybody Phelan to complete him,
[1:20:16] Bob Dobbs: and that meant obsessive news coverage,
[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: and then they put him in the White House.
[1:20:21] Cameron McEwen: So here's what he was.
[1:20:24] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?
[1:20:26] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:20:26] Cameron McEwen: I'm just laughing.
[1:20:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:20:28] Cameron McEwen: That's a whole story.
[1:20:29] Cameron McEwen: scene in which we're living as seamstresses.
[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:20:32] Bob Dobbs: So he applied Rumsfeld,
[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: the famous quote from Rumsfeld in a news briefing,
[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: February 12,
[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: 2002.
[1:20:42] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: reports that say,
[1:20:45] Bob Dobbs: this is what Rumsfeld says,
[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me.
[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: We went on the house,
[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: the news today,
[1:20:53] Bob Dobbs: nothing happened.
[1:20:55] Bob Dobbs: But reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me,
[1:20:59] Bob Dobbs: Rumsfeld says,
[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: because as we know,
[1:21:01] Bob Dobbs: there are known knowns.
[1:21:03] Bob Dobbs: There are things we know we know.
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: We also know there are known unknowns.
[1:21:08] Bob Dobbs: That is to say,
[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: we know there are some things we do not know.
[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: But there are also unknown unknowns.
[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: The ones we don't know,
[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: we don't know.
[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries,
[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.
[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: The unknown unknowns.
[1:21:26] Bob Dobbs: Somehow Trump actualized that.
[1:21:29] Bob Dobbs: He became an unknown unknown.
[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: Or he made it known or something,
[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: by just by being it.
[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: But that's an incredible quote,
[1:21:39] Bob Dobbs: eh?
[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: There are also unknown unknowns.
[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: The ones we don't know,
[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: we don't know.
[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: That's,
[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: that's,
[1:21:45] Bob Dobbs: you've got the executives at the top of the visual space hierarchy talking McLuhan.
[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: That's McLuhan.
[1:21:52] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: invisible anti-environment.
[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: We know there are things that are not invisible.
[1:21:58] Bob Dobbs: They're the figures.
[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: We also know there are the invisible anti-environment,
[1:22:02] Bob Dobbs: or the known unknowns.
[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: We know that there are things we don't know,
[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: because it's a anti-environment,
[1:22:07] Bob Dobbs: we can't figure it out,
[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan helped us understand that.
[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: But there are things we do not know.
[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: There are things that McLuhan didn't talk about,
[1:22:16] Bob Dobbs: or we didn't know he talked about,
[1:22:18] Bob Dobbs: and we're not sure if they're important.
[1:22:19] Bob Dobbs: They're the unknown unknowns.
[1:22:21] Bob Dobbs: They're the...
[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: parallel invisible anti-environment,
[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: parallel timelines.
[1:22:28] Cameron McEwen: But notice that
[1:22:32] Cameron McEwen: Rumsfeld was a guy that could have that kind of insight.
[1:22:40] Cameron McEwen: He was a fellow Princetonian,
[1:22:42] Cameron McEwen: and he had received at least some education there.
[1:22:46] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time that he could say stuff like that,
[1:22:52] Cameron McEwen: that made a great deal of sense,
[1:22:54] Cameron McEwen: he could participate in huge wars.
[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:22:59] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: And make huge mistakes.
[1:23:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:23:02] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: And how somebody could have that kind of thinking going along with that kind of action is very,
[1:23:15] Cameron McEwen: very strange.
[1:23:16] Cameron McEwen: But it's sort of where the modern world's at.
[1:23:19] Bob Dobbs: It's strange and revelatory.
[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: It's the conclusion presented to us.
[1:23:27] Bob Dobbs: What do you call it?
[1:23:27] Bob Dobbs: The transparency of everything becomes clear.
[1:23:33] Cameron McEwen: And how does that relate to the global theater that we're living in?
[1:23:40] Bob Dobbs: It's the Android Meme.
[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: It's past the global theater.
[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: The global theater is a frame.
[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: The digital keeps melting away,
[1:23:50] Bob Dobbs: miniaturizing,
[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: shrinking the global hologram or the global theater until it becomes unknown.
[1:23:57] Bob Dobbs: It's too tiny.
[1:24:00] Cameron McEwen: But is it too Tiny Note the sense of exposing the entire universe?
[1:24:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:24:06] Bob Dobbs: because it makes everybody,
[1:24:09] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:24:09] Bob Dobbs: a god.
[1:24:10] Bob Dobbs: It inflates everybody.
[1:24:12] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:24:13] Bob Dobbs: no one thought in 1965 that they would soon have access to every data there possible and be able to broadcast to billions of people.
[1:24:23] Bob Dobbs: And all that goes on as daily texting life today,
[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: within the Android Meme and then tech body.
[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: Where we ended up,
[1:24:32] Bob Dobbs: nobody saw
[1:24:35] Bob Dobbs: Isaac Asimov,
[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: name any of these science fiction guys who didn't come close.
[1:24:38] Bob Dobbs: But what did come close was Finnegans Wake,
[1:24:41] Bob Dobbs: which was unreadable and a book of unknowns.
[1:24:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:24:50] Cameron McEwen: So can we say that Finnegans Wake is unknown squared?
[1:24:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:24:57] Cameron McEwen: And this...
[1:24:59] Cameron McEwen: The unknown unknowns anti-environment and the tech body is,
[1:25:12] Cameron McEwen: in quotation marks,
[1:25:13] Cameron McEwen: because the is is the question.
[1:25:16] Cameron McEwen: So the tech body is the artist.
[1:25:21] Bob Dobbs: A psychopath,
[1:25:23] Bob Dobbs: a serial killer.
[1:25:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:25:28] Cameron McEwen: like Rumsfeld.
[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: like him,
[1:25:31] Bob Dobbs: like our leaders,
[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: all of them serial killers.
[1:25:37] Cameron McEwen: But our leaders aren't leading anything,
[1:25:40] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:25:40] Cameron McEwen: Service environment that's leading everything,
[1:25:44] Cameron McEwen: including the leaders.
[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: so the leaders,
[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: they thought that they had to present some leadership position.
[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: And so they only looked absurd because you couldn't present a position in a leaderless,
[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: decentralized,
[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: big now.
[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: But then a leader shows up who can lead by being inarticulate and just engaging you and claiming and blatantly lie way beyond.
[1:26:12] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: Washington Post comes up,
[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: he lied for four years,
[1:26:16] Bob Dobbs: 18,000 times,
[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: It's immeasurable what he did as they looked at his constant making a new reality,
[1:26:25] Bob Dobbs: and they were trying to put Gutenberg matching on it.
[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: And it just looked like endless lying.
[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: He understood how to make the present.
[1:26:34] Cameron McEwen: When you say understood how to make the present,
[1:26:37] Cameron McEwen: in a sense,
[1:26:38] Cameron McEwen: he certainly did.
[1:26:39] Cameron McEwen: But in another sense,
[1:26:41] Cameron McEwen: he was totally incompetent.
[1:26:43] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: All of the people that he nominated to work with him were working against him.
[1:26:52] Bob Dobbs: But that created involvement.
[1:26:54] Bob Dobbs: That made you feel part of the thing.
[1:26:56] Bob Dobbs: You want to sympathize.
[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: sympathize with them and the people want to help them because well but whatever help means yeah nobody knew what the help was but just say yeah he's our guy he's the best president Nevitt was almost like you have to have the word that makes the market perfect the white house has to be perfect so the whole population or at least 50 percent of it jumped in and helped Trump
[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: look good because Posthuman could do look good anymore i think a biden he's even worse
[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: But and he purposely does nothing.
[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:27:32] Bob Dobbs: He acts like a living zombie of the unknown to hope to hold it.
[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: And some people claim he's doing a damn good job holding it together.
[1:27:42] Bob Dobbs: But Trump out there saying,
[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: Trump the little kid saying the emperor's got no clothes.
[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: Trump,
[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: Biden's doing me and he's doing a terrible job.
[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: Get me back in there.
[1:27:52] Bob Dobbs: I can do it better.
[1:27:53] Bob Dobbs: I'll make you feel,
[1:27:55] Bob Dobbs: I'll give you something you can get your grip on on how to help me.
[1:27:58] Bob Dobbs: Because nobody can form a complete image of where we're going and where we are.
[1:28:02] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:28:03] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:28:03] Cameron McEwen: So your description of Biden as a living zombie of the unknown,
[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: that's a very good phrase.
[1:28:14] Cameron McEwen: How could you sum Trump in a similar phrase?
[1:28:20] Bob Dobbs: He was a living actor.
[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't a zombie.
[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: I remember he had this magic where...
[1:28:29] Bob Dobbs: Some news guy was beside some soldiers,
[1:28:32] Bob Dobbs: Donald Trump was out on the tarmac with a new kind of plane or something,
[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: a helicopter or something.
[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: And they fired a gun,
[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: a kind of gun salute,
[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: the thing.
[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: Trump in the distance,
[1:28:45] Bob Dobbs: but you hear this female soldier say to this guy,
[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: he didn't even flinch.
[1:28:51] Bob Dobbs: They noticed that the fucking guy,
[1:28:54] Bob Dobbs: he was so either out of touch with everything that he appeared.
[1:28:59] Bob Dobbs: super skin,
[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: super protected,
[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: super aware.
[1:29:06] Bob Dobbs: He was used to fighting out in the field.
[1:29:09] Bob Dobbs: He didn't get thrown by gunshot.
[1:29:11] Bob Dobbs: Look at what they were impressed.
[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: They noticed that.
[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: The guns go off,
[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: and Trump either not registering it.
[1:29:19] Bob Dobbs: Biden is the hidden ground Trump.
[1:29:21] Bob Dobbs: He's a zombie.
[1:29:22] Bob Dobbs: Trump looks alive.
[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: Trump in a stage before where he looks like he's...
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: He's conscious of what's going on,
[1:29:30] Bob Dobbs: and they're very impressed.
[1:29:31] Bob Dobbs: And so you'd see all the time he'd go up to the airplane to go up the side steps,
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: and there would be a guy saluting him,
[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: and the guy's hat would fall off,
[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: blow off.
[1:29:43] Bob Dobbs: Trump go and get the hat.
[1:29:45] Bob Dobbs: He did these little acts of generosity,
[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: of not being a hierarchical queen or king that you had to Bohm to.
[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: He was there to help you.
[1:29:56] Bob Dobbs: on the simplest things,
[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: So he allows himself to go out there and experience the irritation of his ears being blown up by the gun salute,
[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: but he doesn't even flinch.
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: do you get what I'm saying?
[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: That was one of the best things I remember is these two soldiers saying,
[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: wow,
[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: he didn't even flinch.
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: Like,
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: everybody was watching him to support him,
[1:30:17] Bob Dobbs: so they noticed things like that.
[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: He didn't flinch
[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: That's astounding,
[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:30:25] Cameron McEwen: At the same time,
[1:30:29] Cameron McEwen: he flinched in regards to the Federal Reserve or in regards to the regulatory agencies.
[1:30:37] Cameron McEwen: He flinched in exactly the same way that presidents had always done.
[1:30:42] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:30:44] Bob Dobbs: And he let,
[1:30:45] Bob Dobbs: you know how he had the booming economy?
[1:30:48] Bob Dobbs: He let the drug dealers come in and they wouldn't be taxed.
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: And he got all their money that was all offshore.
[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: He went illegal.
[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: He did illegal things or immoral things or something.
[1:31:02] Bob Dobbs: He let the drug dealers be part of the economy.
[1:31:06] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have to hide anymore.
[1:31:07] Bob Dobbs: And that created a boom,
[1:31:08] Bob Dobbs: so there was money to put blacks to work.
[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: And the blacks were very impressed.
[1:31:12] Bob Dobbs: Holy shit,
[1:31:13] Bob Dobbs: this guy's giving us jobs.
[1:31:15] Bob Dobbs: So he's like a Mr.
[1:31:18] Bob Dobbs: Magoo.
[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't make a mistake,
[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: and yet everything he did was,
[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: wrong in relation to tradition.
[1:31:25] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: it's just...
[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: So that's what we're trying to explain here,
[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: how the global theater becomes a Global Membrane,
[1:31:33] Bob Dobbs: and everybody's dancing on the same spot,
[1:31:36] Bob Dobbs: and nobody has a clue what that spot is,
[1:31:39] Bob Dobbs: and yet they look for a leader.
[1:31:40] Bob Dobbs: So you're going to get the gradations of leadership from Kennedy.
[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: He's so effective,
[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: you've got to kill him.
[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: And then you get LBJ.
[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: He's ridiculous.
[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: But then you get Nixon,
[1:31:52] Bob Dobbs: and Nixon is an obvious mafia lawyer,
[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:31:55] Bob Dobbs: And he has a certain image.
[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: And then you have to flip that into Carter.
[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: And then Carter has to flip into a small-town guy,
[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: Reagan.
[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: Then Reagan has to flip into a slick guy,
[1:32:05] Bob Dobbs: Bill Clinton,
[1:32:06] Bob Dobbs: for the Internet
[1:32:07] Bob Dobbs: 90s. And then Bill Clinton has to flip into a dumb zombie,
[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: George Bush Jr.
[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: And then that flips,
[1:32:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: incredibly into a black man as president.
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: And then that flips into a zombie guy or whatever
[1:32:23] Bob Dobbs: Trump.
[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: iON has said that,
[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: Biden is the last president.
[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: Trump not a president.
[1:32:31] Bob Dobbs: That really created involvement.
[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: There's nobody at the sense-making the word that makes the market.
[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: Which is the role of the White House,
[1:32:40] Bob Dobbs: the word that makes the market.
[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: There's nobody doing it.
[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: So everybody had to help the market make a word.
[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: They had to help Trump.
[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: So an amazing,
[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: involving image.
[1:32:53] Bob Dobbs: At the same time,
[1:32:54] Bob Dobbs: everybody's worried that he's going to become a fascist authoritarian,
[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: that he's not.
[1:33:00] Bob Dobbs: He's faking the democratic participatory mystique.
[1:33:05] Bob Dobbs: That then gets into quadrophrenia,
[1:33:08] Bob Dobbs: which is where we're at.
[1:33:09] Cameron McEwen: So let's relate that for a moment to global theater and the Global Membrane.
[1:33:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:33:20] Cameron McEwen: The global theater.
[1:33:22] Cameron McEwen: is a frame,
[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: The proscenium arch.
[1:33:26] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:33:27] Cameron McEwen: And the frame implicates what is beyond.
[1:33:32] Cameron McEwen: the frame.
[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:33:34] Cameron McEwen: you can't frame it.
[1:33:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:33:37] Cameron McEwen: so the progenitor arch is a anti-environment and the satellites implicate what is beyond the satellites.
[1:33:44] Cameron McEwen: So you at once have a frame with its definition that questions itself.
[1:33:52] Cameron McEwen: So how do you see the Global Membrane as being
[1:34:01] Cameron McEwen: uh somehow beyond that or as that is the one spot we're all in like right now we could have four billion people listening to us if you organize everybody they get on their cell phones and tap in right yeah um and
[1:34:16] Bob Dobbs: we'd all be where we'd be all in one spot which had no visual dimensions we just all be there and you might as well say we would be engaging in esp we'd all be inside each other.
[1:34:29] Bob Dobbs: So that's the membrane,
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: the one superangel spot we all exist in.
[1:34:34] Bob Dobbs: And then you put a global theater around it,
[1:34:38] Bob Dobbs: the frame,
[1:34:39] Bob Dobbs: but then the frame becomes a tetrad in four parts.
[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: So that becomes a one.
[1:34:46] Bob Dobbs: The Global Membrane is one,
[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: and the frame has become quadrophrenia.
[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: It's four.
[1:34:52] Bob Dobbs: So the number for the quokka quadrant in my chart,
[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: which is the...
[1:34:58] Bob Dobbs: Quadrant of the Android Meme is 14.
[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: One and four,
[1:35:03] Bob Dobbs: two parallel operations,
[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: The frame has become quadrophrenia,
[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: and the unity,
[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: the implosion is the membrane,
[1:35:11] Bob Dobbs: is one.
[1:35:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: go back to McLuhan.
[1:35:13] Bob Dobbs: He's number 22.
[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: He's A is to B,
[1:35:15] Bob Dobbs: C is to D.
[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: He is the virtual reality with its ratios parallel to the earthly chemical body reality.
[1:35:23] Bob Dobbs: So there's two twos there.
[1:35:25] Bob Dobbs: It's a balanced symmetry.
[1:35:28] Bob Dobbs: The oneness is the ground,
[1:35:30] Bob Dobbs: but you don't see it.
[1:35:31] Bob Dobbs: But then when you get to the Android Meme,
[1:35:33] Bob Dobbs: you see the oneness.
[1:35:34] Bob Dobbs: That's the one part of 14,
[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: and four is the quadrophrenia.
[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: And what is quadrophrenia?
[1:35:39] Bob Dobbs: That is the emotions of paranoia,
[1:35:43] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia,
[1:35:44] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,
[1:35:45] Bob Dobbs: panic,
[1:35:45] Bob Dobbs: and ecstasy.
[1:35:47] Bob Dobbs: Five Explorations of extreme response by the dangling ganglia of the...
[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: Singularity
[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: 1, the Android Meme.
[1:35:59] Bob Dobbs: I mean the Global Membrane.
[1:36:03] Bob Dobbs: That's one.
[1:36:03] Cameron McEwen: How does
[1:36:04] Cameron McEwen: Quadrophrenia have five parts?
[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: Ah,
[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: the chart is 1960 to 1990.
[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: And if you look at the dates of the five parts,
[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: you see that the Dobbs quadrant at the bottom is 1960 to 1990.
[1:36:20] Bob Dobbs: It's all the Dobbs quadrant.
[1:36:22] Bob Dobbs: And then there's four aspects of it.
[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: which is the LaRouche-McLuhan-Thompson-Kroker quadrant.
[1:36:28] Bob Dobbs: So they spin around,
[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: they're Kroker spirals that are circulating around the central spot we all dance on.
[1:36:43] Cameron McEwen: So I was talking about,
[1:36:44] Cameron McEwen: you named,
[1:36:46] Cameron McEwen: you know...
[1:36:47] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:36:47] Bob Dobbs: quadrants four and five.
[1:36:49] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:36:49] Bob Dobbs: Frank Zingrone pointed out that in alchemy...
[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: There's a battle between the alchemists who believe in a basic four-fold structure,
[1:36:58] Bob Dobbs: and I think the Chinese have a five-fold structure.
[1:37:01] Bob Dobbs: So it was four versus five.
[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: the chart is visual space made explicit and extreme because the Android Meme is not visualizable.
[1:37:10] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't look like the chart.
[1:37:11] Bob Dobbs: But you put on the eye,
[1:37:14] Bob Dobbs: and you present the chart.
[1:37:15] Bob Dobbs: This is what it looks like if you could look at it.
[1:37:19] Bob Dobbs: And it's got to have the blurred part of it where four and five.
[1:37:23] Bob Dobbs: five,
[1:37:23] Bob Dobbs: so that's the irony.
[1:37:24] Bob Dobbs: I talk about the quadrants,
[1:37:26] Bob Dobbs: but if you notice,
[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: there's five of them.
[1:37:29] Bob Dobbs: So the mixture of five and four is to bring in non-visual imprecision,
[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: the acoustic or tactile,
[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: to make it resonating.
[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: So it's an intentional Maurice McNamee of things.
[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: That's the quantum physics Lippmann,
[1:37:51] Cameron McEwen: where the lack of
[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: precision is more precise than any precision.
[1:37:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:37:59] Bob Dobbs: fuzzy logic.
[1:38:03] Bob Dobbs: You'll notice each quadrant has a category for many disciplines.
[1:38:09] Bob Dobbs: Each quadrant is a subatomic particle on the chart.
[1:38:15] Cameron McEwen: This is like a chemistry or a cyclotron.
[1:38:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:38:24] Cameron McEwen: but that was a big now.
[1:38:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: and I have at the top,
[1:38:28] Bob Dobbs: I call it a cyclotron.
[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: But at the bottom...
[1:38:32] Bob Dobbs: I'd say...
[1:38:35] Cameron McEwen: Are you saying cyclotron or psychotron?
[1:38:38] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: cyclo,
[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: the physics,
[1:38:40] Bob Dobbs: CERN and that kind of stuff.
[1:38:42] Cameron McEwen: But psychotron is a great name for the global theater,
[1:38:47] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:38:47] Cameron McEwen: Or maybe the global theater slash Global Membrane.
[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:38:52] Bob Dobbs: C-Y-C-L-O,
[1:38:54] Bob Dobbs: cyclotron,
[1:38:55] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:38:55] Bob Dobbs: That's what you're saying.
[1:38:56] Cameron McEwen: But I'm saying psycho.
[1:39:00] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:39:00] Bob Dobbs: it has the psycho embedded in there.
[1:39:02] Cameron McEwen: Psychotron is a pretty good word for our condition.
[1:39:07] Bob Dobbs: That's a tech body.
[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: The tech body is the Android Meme gone psychotic.
[1:39:12] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:39:13] Cameron McEwen: interesting.
[1:39:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:39:14] Bob Dobbs: and I think...
[1:39:17] Cameron McEwen: The psychotron itself has a quadrophrenia of meaning.
[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: and...
[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: I think McLuhan uses the word cyclotron somewheres.
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: At one point,
[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: he calls it the cyclotron,
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: maybe cliché,
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: either playing with archetypes.
[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: It might have been a forward to the paperback version of Culture Is Our Business,
[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: some obscure book like that,
[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: which reminds me...
[1:39:46] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:39:47] Cameron McEwen: It had two different introductions,
[1:39:50] Cameron McEwen: one for the hardback and one for the paperback.
[1:39:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:39:52] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[1:39:54] Bob Dobbs: Have you ever seen
[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: Volume 2?
[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: Of his high school book,
[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: Voices of Literature?
[1:40:02] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:40:02] Cameron McEwen: I have volume two,
[1:40:03] Cameron McEwen: but what I don't have is volume three.
[1:40:05] Cameron McEwen: That's very obscure.
[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: I never heard of that.
[1:40:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:40:10] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:40:11] Cameron McEwen: I'll send you some information on that.
[1:40:14] Cameron McEwen: Andrew
[1:40:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has volume three of
[1:40:19] Cameron McEwen: Voices of Literature and has quoted from its introduction.
[1:40:23] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:40:25] Cameron McEwen: I've tried to find a copy of it.
[1:40:27] Cameron McEwen: Volume 3 of Voices of Literature for years,
[1:40:31] Cameron McEwen: and I haven't been successful.
[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: I saw Volume 2 in the Royal Conservatory of Music in Bloor Street in Toronto,
[1:40:39] Bob Dobbs: in their library,
[1:40:40] Bob Dobbs: someplace like that.
[1:40:40] Bob Dobbs: It was just in there,
[1:40:41] Bob Dobbs: and there was a copy.
[1:40:42] Bob Dobbs: It's the only time I ever saw it.
[1:40:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how many there were made,
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: where they used bookstores,
[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: where are they,
[1:40:49] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't know there was three.
[1:40:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:40:51] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:40:52] Cameron McEwen: the third volume was published years later,
[1:40:55] Cameron McEwen: about 10 years later.
[1:40:57] Bob Dobbs: What's it called?
[1:40:58] Cameron McEwen: Volume 3 of Voices of Literature.
[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: Wow.
[1:41:01] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:41:01] Cameron McEwen: it does have a subtitle,
[1:41:04] Cameron McEwen: something about masks.
[1:41:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:41:06] Bob Dobbs: roles,
[1:41:06] Bob Dobbs: sounds,
[1:41:07] Bob Dobbs: and masks.
[1:41:08] Cameron McEwen: Something like that,
[1:41:09] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:41:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:41:11] Bob Dobbs: and that was an essay he did,
[1:41:13] Bob Dobbs: might have been for that book.
[1:41:15] Bob Dobbs: Anyway,
[1:41:16] Bob Dobbs: so that's interesting.
[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to look at my bibliography,
[1:41:19] Bob Dobbs: Marge Stewart bibliography,
[1:41:20] Bob Dobbs: if there's three there,
[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: but I was always just looking.
[1:41:22] Cameron McEwen: In most bibliographies,
[1:41:24] Cameron McEwen: there's only two.
[1:41:26] Cameron McEwen: And at one time it was denied that there was a volume three.
[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: And I personally thought there was no volume three.
[1:41:35] Cameron McEwen: But now
[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: Andrew has actually quoted from it.
[1:41:40] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:41:41] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:41:41] Cameron McEwen: it exists,
[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:41:43] Cameron McEwen: I've never seen it in any of the used book sites online.
[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: So is this quoted in his...
[1:41:57] Cameron McEwen: Instagram or Mae Brussell Institute?
[1:42:03] Cameron McEwen: I think it was a McLuhan Institute.
[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: Maybe it was in a tweet because he's a fairly active tweeter.
[1:42:10] Cameron McEwen: I don't pay any attention to any of that but I occasionally get emails out of the blue saying,
[1:42:21] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:42:22] Cameron McEwen: have you seen this tweet?
[1:42:25] Bob Dobbs: Mean people tell you.
[1:42:28] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:42:28] Cameron McEwen: it comes from Google,
[1:42:29] Cameron McEwen: I think.
[1:42:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh.
[1:42:31] Cameron McEwen: Or maybe it comes from Twitter itself.
[1:42:33] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:42:35] Cameron McEwen: I get emails and they say,
[1:42:37] Cameron McEwen: here's a tweet from Andrew McLuhan.
[1:42:41] Cameron McEwen: And the subject line is all I get from
[1:42:46] Cameron McEwen: Google or Twitter.
[1:42:48] Cameron McEwen: But it looks interesting and I click on it and then
[1:42:52] Cameron McEwen: I get.
[1:42:53] Cameron McEwen: some sort of random information from the universe.
[1:42:59] Bob Dobbs: So where are we at?
[1:43:02] Bob Dobbs: So you like the way
[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: I number it.
[1:43:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan 2-2,
[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: that's analog media.
[1:43:09] Bob Dobbs: But digital media,
[1:43:10] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme is 1-4.
[1:43:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:43:14] Cameron McEwen: I like that.
[1:43:15] Cameron McEwen: I like the way that...
[1:43:19] Cameron McEwen: You're listening to a fog of numerology.
[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:43:23] Cameron McEwen: And you're saying,
[1:43:24] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[1:43:24] Cameron McEwen: look,
[1:43:24] Cameron McEwen: this is interesting.
[1:43:25] Cameron McEwen: This is interesting.
[1:43:27] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:43:27] Cameron McEwen: Anybody who thinks that these correspond to sort of real things,
[1:43:33] Cameron McEwen: numbers that are sitting on a desk somewhere,
[1:43:40] Cameron McEwen: is wrong.
[1:43:43] Cameron McEwen: You're functioning as a radar system.
[1:43:47] Cameron McEwen: that can bring into focus things that are floating in anti-environment that we don't know is there.
[1:43:57] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:43:58] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: It's very clever what I do.
[1:44:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:44:03] Cameron McEwen: except that clever has nothing to do with it.
[1:44:06] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:44:06] Bob Dobbs: So clever has nothing to do with it.
[1:44:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:44:12] Bob Dobbs: I got to use errors when I talk to you.
[1:44:16] Bob Dobbs: So the,
[1:44:19] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:44:19] Bob Dobbs: so we did that.
[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: So are we getting to see what the global theater is versus the Global Membrane?
[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: Did we help move that along?
[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: a little bit.
[1:44:33] Cameron McEwen: If I understand what you do with those things,
[1:44:37] Cameron McEwen: you see each of them within the other.
[1:44:41] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:44:41] Cameron McEwen: And what you're trying to talk about.
[1:44:45] Cameron McEwen: is the dynamic between the two.
[1:44:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:44:50] Cameron McEwen: I guess the
[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme and the tech body represent constellations of the dynamic between them.
[1:45:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:45:05] Cameron McEwen: That's just my guess.
[1:45:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:45:07] Bob Dobbs: that's good.
[1:45:10] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,
[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: after explaining...
[1:45:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:45:14] Bob Dobbs: Zingrone,
[1:45:16] Bob Dobbs: which is just that he recognizes that McLuhan,
[1:45:21] Bob Dobbs: he's the only other guy who's noticing that McLuhan creating a new meaning for the unconscious.
[1:45:26] Bob Dobbs: It's going past Carl Jung.
[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: who would have thought anyone could alter the idea of an archetype after the dominance of that area by Jung?
[1:45:35] Bob Dobbs: That's a good thought,
[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: good question,
[1:45:37] Bob Dobbs: but that's a way of showing McLuhan went past Jung.
[1:45:40] Bob Dobbs: And so then I say in my little blue part,
[1:45:44] Bob Dobbs: Carl Jung popularized the word archetype,
[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: which meant some symbol in your mind that you dreamt,
[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: something in your unconscious,
[1:45:51] Bob Dobbs: and that was the definition of archetype.
[1:45:53] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan took on the Jung meme and came up with a different definition of archetype,
[1:45:57] Bob Dobbs: which was technologies are the archetypes.
[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan talks about all technologies are the archetypes of the social unconscious.
[1:46:04] Bob Dobbs: Art is something that deals with our unconscious,
[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: and it's very serious,
[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: high-powered play.
[1:46:10] Bob Dobbs: You've got classical art,
[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: capital A art,
[1:46:13] Bob Dobbs: and its ancient anti-environment unconsciousness.
[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: But popular culture today intrudes into the arena of art.
[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: It has been,
[1:46:21] Bob Dobbs: he would say,
[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: one of the most disturbing disruptions of Western culture.
[1:46:26] Bob Dobbs: I guess McLuhan said that somewhere.
[1:46:29] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan highlighting another angle,
[1:46:30] Bob Dobbs: the archetypal power.
[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: Not many people knew that McLuhan had one-upped Jung.
[1:46:36] Bob Dobbs: I have that excellent quotation by William Irwin Thompson where he runs through the different conceptual all-at-onceness.
[1:46:42] Bob Dobbs: Sigmund Freud,
[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: then Carl Jung,
[1:46:44] Bob Dobbs: then Claude Lévi-Strauss,
[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: and Gregory Bateson,
[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: but he leaves out McLuhan.
[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: He should know better.
[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: Frank Zingrone,
[1:46:51] Bob Dobbs: a longtime friend and colleague of Thompson,
[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: is smart enough to notice.
[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: Quote,
[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: hmm,
[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is going past Jung,
[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: and he's trying to talk about it.
[1:46:59] Bob Dobbs: Zingrone marvels.
[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: Who would have thought anyone could alter the idea of an archetype after the dominance of that area by Jung?
[1:47:05] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan did.
[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: that's original to point this out.
[1:47:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't think...
[1:47:13] Bob Dobbs: you've ever seen anybody else talk about the archetype of the unconscious this way.
[1:47:19] Bob Dobbs: You may have thought it when you read it,
[1:47:21] Bob Dobbs: but this is unique what I'm saying,
[1:47:24] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:47:24] Bob Dobbs: This has not been pointed out by McLuhan people,
[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: the updating of the unconscious.
[1:47:34] Cameron McEwen: We'll have to talk some more about what you mean by what you just said.
[1:47:41] Cameron McEwen: Let me just...
[1:47:42] Cameron McEwen: give a little historical background for people here.
[1:47:46] Cameron McEwen: This isn't profound or anything,
[1:47:49] Cameron McEwen: it's just history.
[1:47:51] Cameron McEwen: In the
[1:47:52] Cameron McEwen: 1940s,
[1:47:53] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was very,
[1:47:55] Cameron McEwen: very influenced by Jung.
[1:47:58] Cameron McEwen: When he got to Toronto,
[1:48:02] Cameron McEwen: Fry and others were very taken with
[1:48:08] Cameron McEwen: Jung.
[1:48:12] Cameron McEwen: kind of exercised Jung in areas
[1:48:17] Cameron McEwen: that Jung himself had not.
[1:48:21] Cameron McEwen: But McLuhan,
[1:48:22] Cameron McEwen: before he got to Toronto,
[1:48:23] Cameron McEwen: was already very influenced by Jung.
[1:48:28] Cameron McEwen: So in the
[1:48:32] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, beginning already in
[1:48:36] Cameron McEwen: 1943, let's say,
[1:48:39] Cameron McEwen: and then all the way to 1950,
[1:48:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is trying to think
[1:48:45] Cameron McEwen: through what the whole notion of archetype implicates.
[1:48:53] Cameron McEwen: And eventually he realizes that cliché to archetype cannot be held apart or simply contrasted,
[1:49:07] Cameron McEwen: that as he says here,
[1:49:11] Cameron McEwen: popular culture begins to
[1:49:14] Cameron McEwen: to complicate the archetype.
[1:49:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:49:17] Cameron McEwen: how does it do that?
[1:49:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:49:18] Cameron McEwen: popular culture is cliche.
[1:49:21] Cameron McEwen: And if popular culture can become archetype,
[1:49:25] Cameron McEwen: cliche can become archetype.
[1:49:27] Cameron McEwen: That means that figure and ground are reversible.
[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: And if figure and ground are reversible,
[1:49:34] Cameron McEwen: that calls into question identity.
[1:49:37] Cameron McEwen: It calls into question religion.
[1:49:40] Cameron McEwen: It calls into question everything.
[1:49:42] Cameron McEwen: It calls into question...
[1:49:44] Cameron McEwen: what a question is.
[1:49:46] Cameron McEwen: So what's going on with
[1:49:49] Cameron McEwen: Carl Jung and
[1:49:51] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is that by taking questions from Jung,
[1:49:58] Cameron McEwen: questions that Jung in his own way posed,
[1:50:01] Cameron McEwen: because archetypes for
[1:50:03] Cameron McEwen: Jung are dominant.
[1:50:05] Cameron McEwen: And so the question of the archetype in Jung is,
[1:50:09] Cameron McEwen: what dominates us?
[1:50:10] Cameron McEwen: What already imprints us from
[1:50:15] Cameron McEwen: the get-go,
[1:50:17] Cameron McEwen: but imprint is cliche.
[1:50:20] Cameron McEwen: So what
[1:50:21] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan takes over from Jung is a whole bunch of questions that eventually in 1950 bring McLuhan to question himself.
[1:50:33] Cameron McEwen: And so the whole,
[1:50:35] Cameron McEwen: from 1950 to 1980,
[1:50:37] Cameron McEwen: we have three decades of McLuhan trying to think through what it is.
[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: to be called into question personally excuse me culturally anti-environment yeah he would say we have the questions after 10-15 years they had made an inventory of questions they had some yeah yeah
[1:50:58] Cameron McEwen: but um amongst the questions they have is what is a question yeah so it's like uh you know the uh i forget the artwork of the guy where um he's uh
[1:51:12] Cameron McEwen: the artwork has him going upstairs and downstairs at the same time.
[1:51:17] Bob Dobbs: You mean an Escher kind of piece?
[1:51:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:51:19] Cameron McEwen: exactly,
[1:51:20] Cameron McEwen: an Escher print,
[1:51:20] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: that was a great summary.
[1:51:25] Bob Dobbs: We're well past your time.
[1:51:26] Bob Dobbs: It's ten after six,
[1:51:27] Bob Dobbs: so we'll end on that point.
[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: We'll come back to this quote and talk about archetype.
[1:51:35] Bob Dobbs: That's the next serious terms I have that we needed.
[1:51:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:51:41] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:51:41] Cameron McEwen: I enjoyed that,
[1:51:42] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:51:43] Cameron McEwen: I think I understood a little bit better today where you're coming from from your book,
[1:51:51] Cameron McEwen: with your book,
[1:51:51] Cameron McEwen: and that's the object of our exercise here.
[1:51:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: So thank you for that.
[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to disconnect.
[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: You're going to say goodnight,
[1:52:02] Bob Dobbs: and I'll stop the recording,
[1:52:03] Bob Dobbs: and then I want to mention something to you off air,
[1:52:06] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.
[1:52:07] Bob Dobbs: Okay?
[1:52:07] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:52:07] Bob Dobbs: Stay on the line after you say goodnight.
[1:52:10] Cameron McEwen: Yep.
[1:52:11] Cameron McEwen: Good night,
[1:52:11] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:52:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:52:12] Bob Dobbs: thanks a lot.
[1:52:13] Bob Dobbs: That was very good.