[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is
[00:04] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron and Bob again.
[00:05] Bob Dobbs: This is episode number 52,
[00:08] Bob Dobbs: and we're starting at the top of page 103 of my book.
[00:16] Bob Dobbs: But first,
[00:17] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron has a general thought he wants to bring in.
[00:20] Bob Dobbs: So what was that,
[00:20] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron?
[00:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[00:23] Cameron McEwen: we were talking about the McLuhan Research
[00:27] Cameron McEwen: Community, if you want to call it that.
[00:32] Cameron McEwen: I was saying that it's more than a little ironic that there's almost no dialogue in that community.
[00:45] Cameron McEwen: People are supposedly researching
[00:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and keeping the McLuhan heritage alive,
[00:53] Cameron McEwen: but absent dialogue,
[00:56] Cameron McEwen: absent community Explorations.
[01:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[01:00] Cameron McEwen: now,
[01:01] Bob Dobbs: I get compliments all the time that what we do is the dialogue that people want to hear.
[01:09] Bob Dobbs: And we know how to dialogue.
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: We keep an even pace or even mood.
[01:14] Bob Dobbs: We don't get ridiculous.
[01:15] Bob Dobbs: We listen to each other.
[01:17] Bob Dobbs: And there is underlying disagreement.
[01:19] Bob Dobbs: Somewhere's in there,
[01:20] Bob Dobbs: but you might not even know what they are because we tend to find the same information.
[01:27] Bob Dobbs: around the same issues.
[01:28] Bob Dobbs: So we agree in a lot of areas.
[01:33] Cameron McEwen: Even where we disagree,
[01:35] Cameron McEwen: it's not problematic.
[01:36] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[01:38] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing wrong with disagreement as long as it's frankly acknowledged and discussed and as long as there's an attempt to appreciate where the other person is coming from.
[01:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[01:52] Bob Dobbs: now,
[01:53] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you just said it in his recorded part,
[01:56] Bob Dobbs: but before
[01:57] Bob Dobbs: You said for McLuhan,
[01:58] Bob Dobbs: dialogue was everywhere?
[02:00] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you said?
[02:01] Cameron McEwen: Everything.
[02:01] Cameron McEwen: Everything.
[02:02] Bob Dobbs: Everything is dialogue.
[02:03] Bob Dobbs: That includes talking to people that won't talk?
[02:07] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[02:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[02:07] Cameron McEwen: that's one of the peculiar things about dialogue as an ontological reality.
[02:18] Cameron McEwen: If dialogue is fundamentally true,
[02:22] Cameron McEwen: that is to say,
[02:23] Cameron McEwen: if it's a fundamental part of the universe,
[02:26] Cameron McEwen: then...
[02:27] Cameron McEwen: It would be contradictory to rule that certain things were outside of dialogue.
[02:35] Cameron McEwen: So dialogue needs to always respect the inability of people or communities not to dialogue.
[02:48] Cameron McEwen: And that's a very difficult thought to try to get around.
[02:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[02:53] Bob Dobbs: to respect that people may not want to dialogue.
[02:56] Bob Dobbs: Correct,
[02:57] Cameron McEwen: or may not be able to.
[02:59] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[03:00] Bob Dobbs: So,
[03:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[03:03] Bob Dobbs: I've always tried to talk to everybody I met in the McLuhan scene,
[03:06] Bob Dobbs: but basically I found that they didn't know much of what I was interested in,
[03:11] Bob Dobbs: which was going back and reading a lot of his stuff and seeing the patterns way back then,
[03:17] Bob Dobbs: how they shifted,
[03:19] Bob Dobbs: what caused the shift,
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: what possibly could have done it,
[03:22] Bob Dobbs: what was he doing.
[03:23] Bob Dobbs: And I didn't find anybody,
[03:25] Bob Dobbs: so I had to go on the radio to talk to people,
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: and nobody knew anything,
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: so it didn't help much.
[03:30] Bob Dobbs: I did have Nelson,
[03:31] Bob Dobbs: who was reading stuff,
[03:32] Bob Dobbs: and so he could give interesting responses.
[03:36] Bob Dobbs: But once we all got on Facebook,
[03:38] Bob Dobbs: well,
[03:38] Bob Dobbs: we did.
[03:40] Bob Dobbs: George Sanderson started the first one in 1994,
[03:42] Bob Dobbs: the first group talk.
[03:45] Bob Dobbs: What do you call them?
[03:47] Bob Dobbs: Use Net Forum or something.
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: What?
[03:51] Cameron McEwen: Mailing list,
[03:51] Cameron McEwen: perhaps?
[03:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[03:52] Bob Dobbs: mailing list.
[03:53] Bob Dobbs: That's right,
[03:53] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[03:55] Bob Dobbs: We were talking.
[03:56] Bob Dobbs: We were typing.
[04:00] Cameron McEwen: George was an archetypal dialogist.
[04:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[04:05] Bob Dobbs: and he was a teacher.
[04:06] Cameron McEwen: He was very easy to talk to,
[04:08] Cameron McEwen: and he respected everybody.
[04:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[04:11] Bob Dobbs: and he started the first form as soon as it was before everybody got on the Internet in 1995 with Netscape and all that.
[04:19] Bob Dobbs: Before that,
[04:20] Bob Dobbs: in 1994,
[04:22] Bob Dobbs: he started it.
[04:22] Bob Dobbs: So...
[04:25] Bob Dobbs: That forum went on,
[04:26] Bob Dobbs: but there was always people over-criticizing other people,
[04:30] Bob Dobbs: like not liking them or making a problem.
[04:33] Bob Dobbs: And I usually became a problem for some people at some point,
[04:37] Bob Dobbs: but I always thought that was silly because
[04:39] Bob Dobbs: I didn't like some of these people or what they were doing,
[04:42] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't make an issue out of it.
[04:44] Bob Dobbs: I would just talk to them anyways.
[04:46] Bob Dobbs: I didn't say,
[04:47] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[04:47] Bob Dobbs: we're banning you.
[04:49] Bob Dobbs: I never would support any banning unless someone was really ridiculous.
[04:53] Bob Dobbs: like a psychopath or something but we didn't have any of those in our group or community so
[05:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[05:00] Cameron McEwen: you take dialogue far more seriously than almost anybody else.
[05:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[05:06] Cameron McEwen: Because you say somebody's dead.
[05:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[05:10] Cameron McEwen: all right,
[05:11] Cameron McEwen: I can dialogue with that.
[05:12] Cameron McEwen: Somebody's crazy.
[05:14] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[05:14] Cameron McEwen: I can dialogue with that.
[05:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[05:16] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[05:17] Cameron McEwen: The universe?
[05:17] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[05:18] Cameron McEwen: I can dialogue.
[05:19] Bob Dobbs: The only guy I couldn't dialogue with back then in 99,
[05:22] Bob Dobbs: 2000 was you.
[05:24] Bob Dobbs: Because you had this crazy idea that concept was perceptive.
[05:28] Bob Dobbs: You put everything in quotes.
[05:30] Bob Dobbs: You were the hardest to respond to.
[05:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you remember my response to you,
[05:34] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't respond much to what you were saying.
[05:37] Bob Dobbs: But
[05:38] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you would say what you said back then now,
[05:41] Bob Dobbs: but you are saying now close to what you seemed to be saying back then.
[05:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[05:47] Cameron McEwen: No,
[05:47] Cameron McEwen: I don't think I've changed fundamentally at all.
[05:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[05:50] Cameron McEwen: But
[05:51] Cameron McEwen: I have changed a little bit in how I'm going about the attempt.
[05:58] Cameron McEwen: to communicate.
[05:59] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember you would post,
[06:02] Bob Dobbs: I don't think you'd get much response from anybody.
[06:04] Cameron McEwen: No,
[06:05] Cameron McEwen: of course not.
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knew what you were talking about.
[06:07] Bob Dobbs: Basically you were doing what on the surface seemed to be a philosophical approach to McLuhan,
[06:12] Bob Dobbs: which was conceptual,
[06:13] Bob Dobbs: which was totally wrong.
[06:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: you don't do that,
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[06:16] Bob Dobbs: Come on.
[06:17] Bob Dobbs: But you had a different definition of everything than anybody else did.
[06:21] Bob Dobbs: So we were both trying to dialogue and not getting anywheres and um
[06:28] Bob Dobbs: Other people were playing games.
[06:31] Bob Dobbs: They actually weren't McLuhan.
[06:32] Bob Dobbs: They just came in,
[06:33] Bob Dobbs: pretended they were interested,
[06:34] Bob Dobbs: and then they would go on their own stuff and criticize people.
[06:39] Bob Dobbs: So there never was any real dialogue.
[06:41] Bob Dobbs: So when
[06:43] Bob Dobbs: George stopped and Peter Montgomery took over,
[06:45] Bob Dobbs: he didn't like any of us,
[06:47] Bob Dobbs: so he kept it going.
[06:50] Cameron McEwen: I lost you there for a few minutes,
[06:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,
[06:53] Cameron McEwen: or a few seconds,
[06:54] Cameron McEwen: I should say.
[06:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[06:55] Bob Dobbs: I'll just repeat.
[06:58] Bob Dobbs: George Sanderson did it for a few years,
[07:00] Bob Dobbs: then he gave it up to Peter Montgomery,
[07:02] Bob Dobbs: who was out in British Columbia,
[07:03] Bob Dobbs: and none of us really knew Peter.
[07:05] Bob Dobbs: And
[07:06] Bob Dobbs: Peter didn't like us,
[07:07] Bob Dobbs: it seemed.
[07:09] Bob Dobbs: He preferred Eric or George or something,
[07:12] Bob Dobbs: the old guard.
[07:15] Bob Dobbs: So he put up with us for a few years,
[07:17] Bob Dobbs: but eventually he quit.
[07:18] Bob Dobbs: He didn't like us,
[07:19] Bob Dobbs: so Michael Edmonds took over.
[07:21] Bob Dobbs: Once Michael was there,
[07:22] Bob Dobbs: who was a friend of mine,
[07:24] Bob Dobbs: and then a few other people,
[07:25] Bob Dobbs: and I don't know if you were there then.
[07:27] Bob Dobbs: You were there in the Montgomery period.
[07:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[07:30] Cameron McEwen: I stopped.
[07:31] Cameron McEwen: I couldn't take the lack of dialogue.
[07:34] Bob Dobbs: It was just ridiculous.
[07:36] Bob Dobbs: And I didn't know what you were talking about,
[07:38] Bob Dobbs: or I didn't see how you...
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: basically,
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: I thought you were wrong.
[07:40] Bob Dobbs: And
[07:41] Bob Dobbs: I can go back and find those things and show you what I wrote to you.
[07:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[07:45] Cameron McEwen: they're still online.
[07:47] Bob Dobbs: Are they still online or unmind?
[07:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[07:49] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[07:50] Cameron McEwen: I think they're still online.
[07:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[07:51] Bob Dobbs: if you know where to go,
[07:52] Bob Dobbs: it's in the
[07:53] Bob Dobbs: University of Toronto system.
[07:54] Bob Dobbs: Mike Edmonds knows that stuff.
[07:56] Bob Dobbs: The thing is,
[07:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you remember responding,
[07:58] Bob Dobbs: but I would say it's all conceptual,
[08:01] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[08:02] Bob Dobbs: Where's the percept?
[08:04] Bob Dobbs: But the,
[08:07] Bob Dobbs: so no doubt with you.
[08:09] Cameron McEwen: It didn't bother me at all.
[08:11] Cameron McEwen: What?
[08:11] Cameron McEwen: It didn't bother me at all.
[08:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[08:12] Bob Dobbs: it didn't bother me.
[08:13] Bob Dobbs: I never would have thought we'd end up like this.
[08:16] Bob Dobbs: No way would that could have happened.
[08:17] Bob Dobbs: But the,
[08:20] Bob Dobbs: so among the.
[08:22] Bob Dobbs: people with Michael and a few people it was okay and Andrew Sarris came in and he had been at the archives in 2004 and he came on and said you guys are criticizing Bob but he's the only guy close to what's going on.
[08:33] Bob Dobbs: I've been here for six months reading the archives and it's what Bob says he's McLuhan said you know so he totally supported me so that was a bit made it easier for people to talk you know they didn't know who Andrew was he came out of nowhere and he was doing the actual research at the archives so he
[08:49] Bob Dobbs: had a bit of authority so they had to back off on
[08:52] Bob Dobbs: They're nonsense about me.
[08:54] Bob Dobbs: So that only lasted a few years until about 2008,
[08:59] Bob Dobbs: and then I showed up and I got busy with ION.
[09:00] Bob Dobbs: And then
[09:02] Bob Dobbs: I listened to you in 2015,
[09:03] Bob Dobbs: and I was surprised.
[09:04] Bob Dobbs: This is very interesting.
[09:05] Bob Dobbs: So I had a different approach to you in 2015,
[09:08] Bob Dobbs: and we talked for a while,
[09:10] Bob Dobbs: and then we waited five or so years,
[09:12] Bob Dobbs: and then we're back doing this.
[09:14] Bob Dobbs: Now we're the model of the Internet,
[09:16] Bob Dobbs: people say.
[09:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[09:18] Bob Dobbs: at this time,
[09:18] Bob Dobbs: everybody...
[09:19] Bob Dobbs: divided America,
[09:20] Bob Dobbs: divided everywhere,
[09:21] Bob Dobbs: nobody could talk to anybody.
[09:23] Bob Dobbs: We're there calmly talking and making progress and making insights.
[09:27] Bob Dobbs: So it's actually turned out pretty good.
[09:32] Bob Dobbs: So,
[09:32] Bob Dobbs: yes,
[09:32] Bob Dobbs: I would dialogue with anybody.
[09:33] Bob Dobbs: If that's what you mean,
[09:35] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would do that.
[09:36] Bob Dobbs: He would talk to anybody.
[09:38] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[09:38] Bob Dobbs: Anybody could drop in.
[09:42] Bob Dobbs: And he would talk to controversial people like Tim Leary and that,
[09:45] Bob Dobbs: or Abbie Hoffman,
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: the regular academics wouldn't go near those guys.
[09:49] Bob Dobbs: he would do it.
[09:50] Bob Dobbs: So
[09:51] Bob Dobbs: I thought that's what people should do if you're going to shit on anybody.
[09:56] Bob Dobbs: We shouldn't shit on anybody.
[09:57] Bob Dobbs: We make it should.
[09:59] Bob Dobbs: Shouldn't shit on anybody.
[10:01] Bob Dobbs: I thought the whole thing was,
[10:02] Bob Dobbs: well,
[10:03] Bob Dobbs: listen to people,
[10:03] Bob Dobbs: regardless of what crazy angle they come at.
[10:06] Bob Dobbs: And I thought McLuhan represented that.
[10:09] Bob Dobbs: Anti-environment was doing that.
[10:11] Bob Dobbs: Anti-environment was talking to everybody.
[10:13] Bob Dobbs: That was the ground.
[10:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:15] Cameron McEwen: that's language,
[10:16] Cameron McEwen: right?
[10:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[10:18] Cameron McEwen: Language does that.
[10:19] Cameron McEwen: But notice how this is actually at the very heart of McLuhan
[10:23] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism.
[10:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah. Because for
[10:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, there were thousands of things wrong with.
[10:30] Cameron McEwen: modern Catholicism,
[10:32] Cameron McEwen: but that didn't mean that you couldn't talk with it.
[10:35] Cameron McEwen: It didn't mean that you couldn't look at its traditions,
[10:39] Cameron McEwen: right?
[10:40] Cameron McEwen: So when people try to understand how he could be a Catholic,
[10:45] Cameron McEwen: he could be a Catholic in the same sense that he could be on a talk show.
[10:51] Bob Dobbs: He could be a Catholic because he knew what being a Catholic was.
[10:54] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else knew what to be a Catholic was.
[10:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:58] Cameron McEwen: I kind of agree with that.
[10:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[11:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[11:01] Bob Dobbs: there's a new book out by a Catholic.
[11:04] Bob Dobbs: Have you heard of it?
[11:05] Bob Dobbs: Divine...
[11:07] Bob Dobbs: no,
[11:07] Bob Dobbs: Digital Communion.
[11:11] Cameron McEwen: No.
[11:11] Bob Dobbs: You haven't heard?
[11:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[11:13] Bob Dobbs: So there's a teacher,
[11:16] Bob Dobbs: some guy in New Jersey,
[11:17] Bob Dobbs: who's a Catholic,
[11:18] Bob Dobbs: a devout Catholic.
[11:20] Bob Dobbs: And he's decided that McLuhan,
[11:23] Bob Dobbs: if you understood his deep Catholicism,
[11:25] Bob Dobbs: you'd see that he had a spiritual vision of the virtual age or the digital age.
[11:30] Bob Dobbs: So this guy tries to,
[11:32] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[11:33] Bob Dobbs: bring together quotes by McLuhan.
[11:34] Bob Dobbs: He does pretty good.
[11:35] Bob Dobbs: He goes through all the basic stages or angles of McLuhan religiosity and other things.
[11:41] Bob Dobbs: It's pretty accurate.
[11:43] Bob Dobbs: And then he comes up with this strange vision at the end about how to don't use Tyre de Chardin.
[11:51] Bob Dobbs: He's not good.
[11:52] Bob Dobbs: Or Pierre Lévy or anybody else that some people are recommending.
[11:55] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[11:55] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan the man.
[11:56] Bob Dobbs: He was the perfect.
[11:57] Bob Dobbs: translator for what was going on as a Catholic.
[12:00] Bob Dobbs: He had a sense of humor.
[12:01] Bob Dobbs: He was learned.
[12:03] Bob Dobbs: He was funny.
[12:04] Bob Dobbs: And he lays out all the values you need to have in the middle of the noise.
[12:08] Bob Dobbs: And he's correct on that.
[12:10] Bob Dobbs: So he's telling people,
[12:11] Bob Dobbs: look,
[12:11] Bob Dobbs: go to McLuhan if you want a prophet or someone who sees what we've got here and the problems and the solutions in it.
[12:20] Bob Dobbs: So it's an interesting point.
[12:21] Bob Dobbs: the divine uh
[12:24] Bob Dobbs: He takes McLuhan,
[12:25] Bob Dobbs: what he thinks is McLuhan spirituality,
[12:27] Bob Dobbs: and applies it.
[12:28] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[12:28] Bob Dobbs: this is the closest to how we should talk about the Internet and where we've gotten to in the virtual age.
[12:33] Bob Dobbs: So
[12:34] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if that interests you,
[12:35] Bob Dobbs: but that's a new book.
[12:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[12:36] Cameron McEwen: of course it interests me.
[12:37] Cameron McEwen: I think it's highly important.
[12:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[12:40] Bob Dobbs: so
[12:41] Bob Dobbs: I bought the book and read it,
[12:42] Bob Dobbs: and
[12:43] Bob Dobbs: I'll recommend it to people.
[12:44] Cameron McEwen: What is the book called?
[12:45] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[12:45] Cameron McEwen: do you have it there?
[12:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[12:47] Bob Dobbs: I put it back.
[12:48] Bob Dobbs: It's The Digital Communion.
[12:49] Bob Dobbs: Here,
[12:50] Bob Dobbs: just a minute.
[12:50] Bob Dobbs: I have it down on the bar here.
[12:55] Bob Dobbs: because I'm going to post it.
[13:08] Bob Dobbs: Here it is.
[13:09] Bob Dobbs: Digital Communion,
[13:10] Bob Dobbs: subtitled,
[13:10] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan Spiritual Vision for a Virtual Age.
[13:14] Bob Dobbs: And it just came out in March.
[13:16] Bob Dobbs: Digital Communion,
[13:18] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan Spiritual Vision for a Virtual Age.
[13:21] Bob Dobbs: He may be a professor.
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: What's his name?
[13:25] Bob Dobbs: Nick
[13:27] Bob Dobbs: Ripatrazone. That's R-I-P-A-T-R-A-Z-O-N-E.
[13:35] Bob Dobbs: R-I-P-A-T-R-A-Z-O-N-E.
[13:38] Bob Dobbs: So Ripatrazone.
[13:41] Bob Dobbs: So now,
[13:43] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[13:44] Bob Dobbs: people shy away of saying things like spiritual around McLuhan,
[13:47] Bob Dobbs: right?
[13:47] Bob Dobbs: There's all kinds of worry about...
[13:51] Bob Dobbs: trying to interpret McLuhan's Catholicism.
[13:52] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[13:53] Bob Dobbs: he didn't talk about it.
[13:53] Bob Dobbs: That's his private stuff.
[13:54] Bob Dobbs: He didn't bring that into his work,
[13:56] Bob Dobbs: blah,
[13:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[13:57] Bob Dobbs: all the different arguments.
[13:58] Bob Dobbs: So it's a unique title,
[14:02] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan's Spiritual Vision for a Virtual Age,
[14:06] Bob Dobbs: which is,
[14:07] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[14:07] Bob Dobbs: see how,
[14:08] Bob Dobbs: read it and see how he tries to figure out,
[14:11] Bob Dobbs: how he tries to explain this title.
[14:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[14:15] Cameron McEwen: So do you read books like that online?
[14:17] Cameron McEwen: Like,
[14:18] Cameron McEwen: do you get a digital version?
[14:20] Bob Dobbs: No.
[14:20] Cameron McEwen: Do you buy the book?
[14:21] Cameron McEwen: the print version.
[14:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't like reading online.
[14:25] Bob Dobbs: I like holding books.
[14:27] Bob Dobbs: I mark up the book.
[14:28] Bob Dobbs: I can shift pages fast and go back and forth and get to know the book.
[14:33] Bob Dobbs: I'm not as good at that on the digital.
[14:37] Bob Dobbs: I can't mark it.
[14:38] Bob Dobbs: I don't like the marking system or the editing or whatever you call it on the digital thing.
[14:42] Bob Dobbs: So I like my pen.
[14:44] Bob Dobbs: So yeah,
[14:45] Bob Dobbs: I buy everybody's book.
[14:49] Bob Dobbs: I got pretty well every McLuhan book there is,
[14:53] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[14:53] Bob Dobbs: by other people.
[14:56] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh.
[14:56] Cameron McEwen: I bought another one.
[14:59] Bob Dobbs: Another one I just finished was an art professor.
[15:01] Bob Dobbs: I think I told you it's called Finding Nothing.
[15:04] Bob Dobbs: It's about the avant-garde art scene in Vancouver in the 60s and
[15:09] Bob Dobbs: 70s. Did I tell you about that?
[15:11] Cameron McEwen: No.
[15:13] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[15:13] Bob Dobbs: this guy,
[15:14] Bob Dobbs: Greg Betts,
[15:15] Bob Dobbs: he's a professor at Acadia University,
[15:17] Bob Dobbs: a young guy,
[15:18] Bob Dobbs: more of an estate.
[15:19] Bob Dobbs: He's into the art history,
[15:21] Bob Dobbs: art world.
[15:23] Bob Dobbs: There's this book called
[15:24] Bob Dobbs: Counterblast Canada.
[15:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[15:26] Cameron McEwen: I know that.
[15:27] Cameron McEwen: I have that.
[15:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[15:28] Bob Dobbs: so read his essay in there.
[15:30] Bob Dobbs: It's very good.
[15:31] Bob Dobbs: He has some good McLuhan quotes about McLuhan as an artist.
[15:35] Bob Dobbs: What is art for McLuhan?
[15:37] Bob Dobbs: So I noted that.
[15:38] Bob Dobbs: Then I saw he had a book out.
[15:40] Bob Dobbs: It just came out recently.
[15:42] Bob Dobbs: It's called Finding Nothing,
[15:44] Bob Dobbs: and then a long subtitle.
[15:46] Bob Dobbs: And it's about the concrete poets of Vancouver,
[15:51] Bob Dobbs: Bill Bissett.
[15:52] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that name?
[15:54] Cameron McEwen: No.
[15:55] Bob Dobbs: Or B.P.
[15:56] Bob Dobbs: Nickel.
[15:56] Bob Dobbs: You might have heard of him.
[15:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[15:58] Cameron McEwen: I have.
[15:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[15:59] Bob Dobbs: B.B.
[16:00] Bob Dobbs: Nichols.
[16:00] Bob Dobbs: And Earl Burney,
[16:02] Bob Dobbs: he's one of the older poets.
[16:03] Bob Dobbs: They had a very tumultuous art scene.
[16:08] Bob Dobbs: The thesis is that Vancouver,
[16:09] Bob Dobbs: by the time McLuhan came,
[16:11] Bob Dobbs: he did the medium of the message with the radio broadcasters in 1958.
[16:16] Bob Dobbs: And then they had this festival in the early
[16:18] Bob Dobbs: 60s, and they brought McLuhan in for that.
[16:20] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan,
[16:21] Bob Dobbs: he planted his seeds early in Vancouver,
[16:25] Bob Dobbs: and so it inspired a lot of the artists,
[16:27] Bob Dobbs: younger artists,
[16:28] Bob Dobbs: there.
[16:29] Bob Dobbs: So they apply McLuhan to the arts in poetry and literature,
[16:36] Bob Dobbs: but because they were just starting out and they had Acadia University,
[16:39] Bob Dobbs: Simon Fraser University,
[16:40] Bob Dobbs: and the other one had not really developed much.
[16:42] Bob Dobbs: It was a backwater before the
[16:45] Bob Dobbs: 50s, before the 60s.
[16:47] Bob Dobbs: So all the university departments were quite open to the street poets and the people down in the ghettos,
[16:53] Bob Dobbs: the artist ghettos and all over the place.
[16:56] Bob Dobbs: And so they Thank you.
[16:57] Bob Dobbs: Adopted,
[16:58] Bob Dobbs: brought these guys into academia and let them teach or talk or perform and
[17:03] Bob Dobbs: Way more open than the Toronto scene.
[17:05] Bob Dobbs: Toronto has the old factions,
[17:06] Bob Dobbs: right?
[17:07] Bob Dobbs: The old snobbishness is
[17:09] Bob Dobbs: You know a lot of people in the academia didn't like McLuhan,
[17:12] Bob Dobbs: didn't like anybody hung around them
[17:14] Bob Dobbs: So that wasn't so it was a lot more freer with the academics and the academics could bring in
[17:21] Bob Dobbs: Other famous people so they had a famous poetry conference in 1963
[17:27] Bob Dobbs: Ginsburg and everybody went there,
[17:29] Bob Dobbs: Robert Duncan,
[17:30] Bob Dobbs: Robert Crowley,
[17:31] Bob Dobbs: all these
[17:32] Bob Dobbs: American poets.
[17:33] Bob Dobbs: And then the Vancouver guys,
[17:35] Bob Dobbs: they had their little contingent.
[17:38] Bob Dobbs: So Greg says,
[17:39] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[17:39] Bob Dobbs: here is this much creativity going on.
[17:43] Bob Dobbs: And it also reflected the counterculture and what the Baby Boomers were doing with their drugs and their communes and rock music and all that.
[17:51] Bob Dobbs: So he makes it case that there was a really amazing art scene in Vancouver from 59.
[17:57] Bob Dobbs: to 75.
[17:58] Bob Dobbs: So he says,
[17:59] Bob Dobbs: I'm doing a micro history of that period.
[18:02] Bob Dobbs: And it's about finding nothing.
[18:04] Bob Dobbs: That's the title.
[18:06] Bob Dobbs: So that book was very interesting in how they use McLuhan.
[18:11] Bob Dobbs: That's what I do.
[18:12] Bob Dobbs: I find out how they use McLuhan.
[18:15] Bob Dobbs: What angle do they take on them?
[18:18] Bob Dobbs: And it is,
[18:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[18:19] Bob Dobbs: in the Toronto in the 60s,
[18:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[18:21] Bob Dobbs: I knew more about Toronto than Vancouver and everybody else did.
[18:26] Bob Dobbs: It was,
[18:28] Bob Dobbs: there was a block against Vancouver.
[18:30] Bob Dobbs: They were too far away or something.
[18:32] Bob Dobbs: And they didn't seem to make any impact.
[18:37] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[18:37] Bob Dobbs: BP,
[18:38] Bob Dobbs: Nickel and Bissett,
[18:39] Bob Dobbs: they came to Toronto by the middle or late 60s.
[18:42] Bob Dobbs: They didn't stay in Vancouver too long,
[18:44] Bob Dobbs: even though they kept doing things out there,
[18:46] Bob Dobbs: going back and forth.
[18:47] Bob Dobbs: But
[18:48] Bob Dobbs: Toronto was the scene for Canada,
[18:51] Bob Dobbs: in my perception,
[18:52] Bob Dobbs: of what was going on.
[18:53] Bob Dobbs: Not Vancouver,
[18:54] Bob Dobbs: so it was very interesting to find out what was going on.
[18:56] Bob Dobbs: And in many ways,
[18:57] Bob Dobbs: it was a livelier scene than Toronto.
[19:00] Bob Dobbs: Because Toronto had too much people trying to become professionals as soon as possible.
[19:05] Bob Dobbs: Published authors and all that.
[19:07] Bob Dobbs: The people in
[19:09] Bob Dobbs: Vancouver, either they had an inferiority complex,
[19:12] Bob Dobbs: didn't think they could get published,
[19:13] Bob Dobbs: or they didn't care,
[19:14] Bob Dobbs: and they made their own presses.
[19:15] Bob Dobbs: They made an incredible number of magazines and book presses.
[19:20] Bob Dobbs: So they published each other's.
[19:22] Bob Dobbs: friends in that.
[19:24] Bob Dobbs: So it was a little more open than Toronto.
[19:28] Cameron McEwen: Did he mention that
[19:31] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was in
[19:33] Cameron McEwen: Vancouver at UBC in
[19:36] Cameron McEwen: 1958? Yeah.
[19:38] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[19:38] Bob Dobbs: now here's the problem.
[19:40] Bob Dobbs: He says that McLuhan came and spoke at some place in 59.
[19:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[19:47] Cameron McEwen: that's what I was just going to mention.
[19:48] Cameron McEwen: And then...
[19:50] Bob Dobbs: No,
[19:50] Bob Dobbs: wait a minute.
[19:50] Bob Dobbs: There's more.
[19:51] Bob Dobbs: Then it's sort of confused that maybe he spoke in 61,
[19:56] Bob Dobbs: but John Cage and other people around McLuhan came in his new festival conference.
[20:01] Bob Dobbs: And so 61,
[20:03] Bob Dobbs: 62,
[20:03] Bob Dobbs: 63,
[20:03] Bob Dobbs: 64.
[20:05] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[20:05] Bob Dobbs: I know that Gerd met McLuhan in
[20:09] Bob Dobbs: Vancouver in early 64 at the festival of that year,
[20:13] Bob Dobbs: 64.
[20:14] Bob Dobbs: But they describe in like Terrence Gordon and maybe Marchand the festival in 65.
[20:20] Bob Dobbs: where it was called The Medium is the Message,
[20:22] Bob Dobbs: and it's all about McLuhan,
[20:24] Bob Dobbs: and they had happenings and things,
[20:26] Bob Dobbs: but McLuhan wasn't there,
[20:28] Bob Dobbs: but it's presented,
[20:28] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[20:29] Bob Dobbs: Norden and Marchand that he was there,
[20:31] Bob Dobbs: and it's confused.
[20:33] Bob Dobbs: But this book,
[20:35] Bob Dobbs: which has a lot of
[20:37] Bob Dobbs: Greg Betts only,
[20:39] Bob Dobbs: his personal collection,
[20:40] Bob Dobbs: he collected all these.
[20:42] Bob Dobbs: scenes,
[20:44] Bob Dobbs: poetry,
[20:45] Bob Dobbs: pamphlets and stuff.
[20:46] Bob Dobbs: So he has a pamphlet for 1965,
[20:49] Bob Dobbs: the one that's called
[20:51] Bob Dobbs: The Medium is the Message,
[20:52] Bob Dobbs: the one devoted to McLuhan,
[20:53] Bob Dobbs: and the one that McLuhan didn't show up at,
[20:56] Bob Dobbs: because it says that
[20:58] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan came the year before,
[21:01] Bob Dobbs: and there was also Gerd Stern.
[21:03] Bob Dobbs: So that confirmed to me that Gerd and McLuhan were there in 1964,
[21:09] Bob Dobbs: and nobody talks about that.
[21:10] Bob Dobbs: They talk about the festival in 65 inspired by McLuhan,
[21:15] Bob Dobbs: and that maybe he was there,
[21:17] Bob Dobbs: or back in 59.
[21:19] Bob Dobbs: They don't know about the radio broadcasters.
[21:22] Bob Dobbs: This guy doesn't.
[21:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't think he has that in there.
[21:25] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't have the 58 visit.
[21:28] Bob Dobbs: But the point is that they know McLuhan was out there,
[21:31] Bob Dobbs: and they might even have a copy of his speech or something,
[21:33] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know if they had any excerpts,
[21:36] Bob Dobbs: or they didn't have any visuals of it.
[21:40] Bob Dobbs: They know they have
[21:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan saying something.
[21:43] Bob Dobbs: They may just not have the right year.
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: And they know that everybody was inspired by it.
[21:49] Bob Dobbs: A lot of people started trying to figure out what McLuhan was saying.
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: So now Gerd,
[21:54] Bob Dobbs: he had a
[21:55] Bob Dobbs: Gerd Stern,
[21:56] Bob Dobbs: he was interviewed by Acadia University in the San Francisco area about his whole life.
[22:01] Bob Dobbs: And it's online.
[22:02] Bob Dobbs: I can send you.
[22:02] Bob Dobbs: It's very interesting.
[22:04] Cameron McEwen: I have that.
[22:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[22:06] Bob Dobbs: And he...
[22:09] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to remember.
[22:11] Bob Dobbs: He put his show on in November 1963,
[22:13] Bob Dobbs: just before the Kennedy assassination,
[22:15] Bob Dobbs: at the San Francisco Museum,
[22:17] Bob Dobbs: the first one of major multimedia installations.
[22:20] Bob Dobbs: And he got a letter a few weeks later from somebody in Vancouver who said he was at the San
[22:29] Bob Dobbs: Francisco Museum,
[22:31] Bob Dobbs: but he never talked to Gerd,
[22:32] Bob Dobbs: he just saw his show.
[22:33] Bob Dobbs: But then he said...
[22:34] Bob Dobbs: I noticed you were influenced by McLuhan.
[22:36] Bob Dobbs: There was some evidence of that,
[22:38] Bob Dobbs: a pamphlet or something.
[22:39] Bob Dobbs: So he said,
[22:39] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan going to be here in February.
[22:43] Bob Dobbs: Would you like to come up here and present your stuff and meet McLuhan?
[22:46] Bob Dobbs: So Gerd and his colleagues did that.
[22:49] Bob Dobbs: They went up there.
[22:50] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't remember the name of the guy.
[22:54] Bob Dobbs: He didn't know if he was,
[22:55] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what he said,
[22:56] Bob Dobbs: director of a gallery or something.
[22:58] Bob Dobbs: So...
[23:02] Bob Dobbs: It's always been a mystery who the person was.
[23:05] Bob Dobbs: And it wasn't the guy,
[23:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't think he invited McLuhan to the radio broadcaster,
[23:09] Bob Dobbs: so that was something different.
[23:12] Bob Dobbs: But going through this book,
[23:15] Bob Dobbs: which I just got recently,
[23:17] Bob Dobbs: there's a list of all these people who potentially could have been the person who invited McLuhan in 1964.
[23:24] Bob Dobbs: So I figure out it's probably a guy named
[23:26] Bob Dobbs: Alvin Malkind,
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: some strange name.
[23:29] Bob Dobbs: So I wrote to Gerd or sent him an email.
[23:31] Bob Dobbs: I said...
[23:31] Bob Dobbs: Is this the guy that you couldn't remember 30 years ago when you did that interview?
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: He goes,
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: yes,
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: bingo,
[23:37] Bob Dobbs: that's the guy.
[23:38] Bob Dobbs: So it kind of reminded him of the name.
[23:40] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[23:41] Bob Dobbs: he had long forgotten it,
[23:43] Bob Dobbs: but if you said it,
[23:44] Bob Dobbs: he'd recognize it.
[23:45] Bob Dobbs: So Gerd confirmed it,
[23:48] Bob Dobbs: and then you see his name is listed as being involved in 64 and 65 with the festival.
[23:53] Bob Dobbs: So that big mystery I've had for decades got solved because of this finding nothing,
[23:58] Bob Dobbs: posting,
[23:59] Bob Dobbs: having in the book the pamphlet.
[24:01] Bob Dobbs: for the 1965 Medium is the Message Festival.
[24:07] Bob Dobbs: So,
[24:07] Bob Dobbs: now,
[24:08] Bob Dobbs: do you know it's confused?
[24:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[24:11] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[24:11] Cameron McEwen: I think it is confused because usually people don't have the underlying documents.
[24:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[24:18] Cameron McEwen: And so they pick up something in a letter or something and then they have to try to string it together.
[24:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[24:26] Cameron McEwen: And the...
[24:29] Cameron McEwen: Confusion comes from a lack of evidence.
[24:34] Cameron McEwen: So one thing I just wanted to point out from what you were saying,
[24:38] Cameron McEwen: people seem to know that
[24:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan did come to UBC in 1959.
[24:49] Bob Dobbs: Not the radio broadcasters.
[24:51] Cameron McEwen: No.
[24:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[24:52] Cameron McEwen: right.
[24:54] Cameron McEwen: The radio broadcasters,
[24:55] Cameron McEwen: that was May of 1958.
[24:58] Cameron McEwen: And he was only there briefly,
[25:00] Cameron McEwen: and he was there by himself.
[25:03] Cameron McEwen: And then he was asked back for the whole summer session in 1959,
[25:09] Cameron McEwen: and he took his whole family out there.
[25:11] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[25:11] Bob Dobbs: I thought he went out to California with his family.
[25:14] Cameron McEwen: He did.
[25:16] Cameron McEwen: In 59?
[25:19] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if they went to California in 59 or not.
[25:22] Cameron McEwen: I'd have to...
[25:24] Bob Dobbs: But he went to Vancouver in 59.
[25:27] Bob Dobbs: You know that.
[25:27] Cameron McEwen: He went to Vancouver and he stayed there.
[25:30] Cameron McEwen: He stayed there for,
[25:32] Cameron McEwen: I believe,
[25:32] Cameron McEwen: six weeks with his family.
[25:37] Cameron McEwen: So the point being...
[25:40] Bob Dobbs: I don't...
[25:41] Bob Dobbs: see that in the biographies because somebody in the Nick Betts world said this.
[25:46] Bob Dobbs: They knew that he'd come to
[25:48] Bob Dobbs: Vancouver in 59.
[25:49] Bob Dobbs: They give that date.
[25:50] Bob Dobbs: And I know they're not talking about the Raider Broadcasters,
[25:52] Bob Dobbs: and I'm wondering what are they talking about?
[25:53] Bob Dobbs: But you know about this.
[25:55] Bob Dobbs: How did you find out about that particular visit?
[25:57] Bob Dobbs: Is it in the letters?
[26:00] Cameron McEwen: No.
[26:05] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to think.
[26:08] Cameron McEwen: There is information in the UBC.
[26:11] Cameron McEwen: archive and so I have that but it may even be that there's information about the 1959 summer
[26:22] Cameron McEwen: UBC session online okay
[26:27] Cameron McEwen: I've got
[26:28] Cameron McEwen: I've dealt with this a little bit in a couple posts and but it's a little vague Wimsatt the moment because there's hundreds of posts that
[26:39] Cameron McEwen: I've come in between my writing that and now.
[26:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[26:43] Cameron McEwen: But
[26:44] Cameron McEwen: I can look that up and send you some of the background.
[26:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:48] Bob Dobbs: and look at Shaun book and see what he says about that period.
[26:52] Bob Dobbs: And Norden biography,
[26:53] Bob Dobbs: if you have them,
[26:54] Bob Dobbs: look in those and see what they say.
[26:57] Bob Dobbs: But other people,
[26:59] Bob Dobbs: they'll say McLuhan came to the festival in
[27:01] Bob Dobbs: 65 and he didn't.
[27:04] Bob Dobbs: And other people say he didn't go.
[27:06] Bob Dobbs: I just read somewhere.
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if it was this divine Digital Communion book,
[27:13] Bob Dobbs: but someone just recently was saying,
[27:15] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[27:15] Bob Dobbs: they say he was there,
[27:16] Bob Dobbs: or they devote the thing there,
[27:18] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't show up.
[27:19] Bob Dobbs: So,
[27:20] Bob Dobbs: different views around the 65 phenomenon.
[27:24] Bob Dobbs: But this one pamphlet about 1964 names Gerd and McLuhan.
[27:30] Bob Dobbs: So we know it happened in 64 when Gerd,
[27:32] Bob Dobbs: in his own letter writing,
[27:34] Bob Dobbs: has the evidence of that.
[27:35] Bob Dobbs: But nobody talks about that.
[27:37] Bob Dobbs: The famous quote that came out of that is that McLuhan came up to Gerd after he gave his performance and McLuhan had done his speech.
[27:44] Bob Dobbs: And he comes up to Gerd and says,
[27:45] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting what you guys do,
[27:47] Bob Dobbs: but what's this got to do with me?
[27:50] Bob Dobbs: Which shocked Gerd because he had just read this report that John,
[27:57] Bob Dobbs: he had just read the Project 69 thing.
[28:00] Bob Dobbs: And he had gotten that through a friend of John Cage at Black Mountain College,
[28:05] Bob Dobbs: a female.
[28:06] Bob Dobbs: professor,
[28:07] Bob Dobbs: poet,
[28:08] Bob Dobbs: M.C.
[28:09] Bob Dobbs: Richards,
[28:09] Bob Dobbs: I think her name is.
[28:13] Bob Dobbs: And she lived with Cage in a commune north of New York City in that early 60s period.
[28:18] Bob Dobbs: So
[28:20] Bob Dobbs: Gerd was inspired by
[28:22] Bob Dobbs: Project Early Version of Understanding Media,
[28:24] Bob Dobbs: so to speak,
[28:26] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't understand why McLuhan didn't see the relevance of what he was doing.
[28:31] Bob Dobbs: Because he was totally responsible,
[28:33] Bob Dobbs: totally inspired by McLuhan,
[28:35] Bob Dobbs: he thought.
[28:37] Cameron McEwen: Remember,
[28:37] Cameron McEwen: this is an interpretation of what
[28:44] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was saying.
[28:46] Cameron McEwen: It was not only an interpretation of what McLuhan was saying,
[28:50] Cameron McEwen: but an interpretation of where McLuhan was coming from and his gestures and stuff.
[28:57] Cameron McEwen: So
[28:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that reports like that can be taken as factual.
[29:04] Cameron McEwen: I think they need to be taken.
[29:07] Cameron McEwen: as important information,
[29:10] Cameron McEwen: but they need to be interrogated.
[29:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[29:13] Bob Dobbs: so Gerd,
[29:16] Bob Dobbs: he always talked about McLuhan,
[29:19] Bob Dobbs: if it ever came up,
[29:20] Bob Dobbs: but they made the cover time of Life magazine twice.
[29:23] Bob Dobbs: They became artists in their own right in the New York scene.
[29:27] Bob Dobbs: But they inspired John Brockman,
[29:29] Bob Dobbs: who went on to publish everybody in the Edge series.
[29:33] Bob Dobbs: He's the major literary agent that came out of that scene.
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: He was a friend of Stewart Brand.
[29:38] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[29:38] Bob Dobbs: Gerd introduced John to Jim Stewart.
[29:41] Bob Dobbs: They're all mixed in.
[29:45] Bob Dobbs: When I called up Brockman when I got to New York in 1993,
[29:49] Bob Dobbs: I said I'd like to get together and talk about McLuhan and all that because he had done a book inspired by McLuhan in 1969.
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: no,
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: no,
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: I'm very busy.
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: You want to talk to Gerd Stern.
[30:03] Bob Dobbs: So I'd heard of Gerd Stern.
[30:05] Bob Dobbs: And I said,
[30:05] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[30:06] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[30:06] Bob Dobbs: So he gave me the number.
[30:06] Bob Dobbs: So I got in touch with Gerd,
[30:08] Bob Dobbs: and that turned out to be the right guy.
[30:10] Bob Dobbs: I didn't do it for a couple years.
[30:11] Bob Dobbs: Then I did.
[30:13] Bob Dobbs: So there's a whole story how we got together.
[30:15] Bob Dobbs: And then we invited him to Mark Stahlman,
[30:17] Bob Dobbs: and he was part of our nonlinear circle the last year or so.
[30:21] Bob Dobbs: But
[30:23] Bob Dobbs: Gerd and I became friends.
[30:24] Bob Dobbs: And then he started being invited all over the world at art colleges as one of the 60s people,
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: the only one left and alive.
[30:32] Bob Dobbs: and his main thing to talk to everybody was about McLuhan.
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: So a lot of people didn't know about McLuhan,
[30:40] Bob Dobbs: so he had,
[30:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[30:41] Bob Dobbs: interesting experience at McLuhan.
[30:44] Bob Dobbs: So then,
[30:45] Bob Dobbs: about 2005,
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall came to City Island,
[30:50] Bob Dobbs: where I was living.
[30:51] Bob Dobbs: And so I arranged for Gerd to meet Don Theall,
[30:53] Bob Dobbs: because they were born within 24 hours of each other,
[30:57] Bob Dobbs: October 12th and 13th,
[30:58] Bob Dobbs: 1928.
[31:00] Bob Dobbs: And they both end up growing up in New York,
[31:02] Bob Dobbs: because Gerd was born in Germany.
[31:05] Bob Dobbs: But the Nazis drove him out in the 30s,
[31:07] Bob Dobbs: so they came to New York.
[31:09] Bob Dobbs: And his mother's best friend was Henry Kissinger's mother in some part of New York City,
[31:16] Bob Dobbs: maybe Morningside Heights or something.
[31:18] Bob Dobbs: And so he went to the same school as Kissinger did.
[31:20] Bob Dobbs: So Gerd always,
[31:21] Bob Dobbs: I call him the Forrest Gump of the art world.
[31:23] Bob Dobbs: He bumps into everybody,
[31:25] Bob Dobbs: and he connects with everybody.
[31:27] Bob Dobbs: So
[31:29] Bob Dobbs: I got him to meet Don Theall.
[31:30] Bob Dobbs: So he read Don Theall
[31:33] Bob Dobbs: The Virtual
[31:34] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan.
[31:36] Bob Dobbs: And he's halfway through it,
[31:37] Bob Dobbs: and he goes,
[31:38] Bob Dobbs: Jesus,
[31:38] Bob Dobbs: Bob,
[31:39] Bob Dobbs: I never knew McLuhan was a poet,
[31:40] Bob Dobbs: because Gerd was a poet,
[31:42] Bob Dobbs: a traditional poet,
[31:43] Bob Dobbs: a concrete poet,
[31:44] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of stuff.
[31:45] Bob Dobbs: He was a poet,
[31:47] Bob Dobbs: and he knew Ginsburg and everybody and all that.
[31:50] Bob Dobbs: So he goes,
[31:51] Bob Dobbs: I never knew McLuhan was a poet,
[31:53] Bob Dobbs: which is ridiculous.
[31:55] Cameron McEwen: No,
[31:55] Cameron McEwen: it's not,
[31:56] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[31:56] Cameron McEwen: It's not.
[31:57] Bob Dobbs: No,
[31:58] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[31:58] Bob Dobbs: No,
[31:58] Bob Dobbs: it's ridiculous.
[31:59] Bob Dobbs: But I know why he doesn't know it.
[32:01] Bob Dobbs: But the point is,
[32:02] Bob Dobbs: he was shocked,
[32:03] Bob Dobbs: and he found Don's.
[32:04] Bob Dobbs: This is fairly interesting because,
[32:06] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[32:06] Bob Dobbs: he's like me,
[32:07] Bob Dobbs: a poet.
[32:08] Bob Dobbs: So the point is that Gerd is the only expert out there that art colleges use,
[32:13] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about McLuhan,
[32:14] Bob Dobbs: and if it wasn't for Don Theall,
[32:16] Bob Dobbs: he'd be way off in what he talked about on McLuhan.
[32:19] Bob Dobbs: Not that it would matter,
[32:21] Bob Dobbs: but to me it's ironic that he was the guy that would speak about McLuhan to these millennials,
[32:28] Bob Dobbs: and he didn't even know McLuhan was a poet.
[32:32] Bob Dobbs: till the later years.
[32:33] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[32:34] Bob Dobbs: you would say something different about that?
[32:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[32:38] Cameron McEwen: no,
[32:39] Cameron McEwen: I don't know different.
[32:41] Cameron McEwen: It's a footnote to what you're saying.
[32:44] Cameron McEwen: When you're talking about
[32:46] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan being a poet or lots of people talk about him being an artist,
[32:51] Cameron McEwen: they're generally using sort of metaphorical language to describe a guy that's not using...
[33:00] Cameron McEwen: language in the way that you would expect and who as a professor yeah and and well as anybody you know i don't think there's too many people uh who have minds that work like McLuhan mind yeah and
[33:16] Cameron McEwen: so they say well he was an artist because um his um uh ideas were not formulated as a narrative uh they were a formula
[33:29] Cameron McEwen: formulated as a mosaic,
[33:31] Cameron McEwen: as a Gestalt.
[33:34] Cameron McEwen: People associate that with art.
[33:38] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that anybody thinks McLuhan was an artist like a guy sitting in front of an easel and sort of painting or something.
[33:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't think they think of him as a poet as somebody who was composing poems.
[33:54] Cameron McEwen: However,
[33:57] Cameron McEwen: about a month ago,
[33:58] Cameron McEwen: I was going through the editions to McLuhan books at the University of Toronto.
[34:08] Bob Dobbs: What do you mean you were going through them?
[34:10] Bob Dobbs: What does that mean?
[34:12] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[34:12] Cameron McEwen: going through the spreadsheet that describes them.
[34:15] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[34:15] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[34:16] Bob Dobbs: Of his library.
[34:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[34:19] Cameron McEwen: there's two spreadsheets,
[34:21] Cameron McEwen: right?
[34:22] Cameron McEwen: One is the books,
[34:23] Cameron McEwen: and then the other is all the stuff that was taken out of the books.
[34:28] Cameron McEwen: And
[34:29] Cameron McEwen: I'm very interested in the stuff that was taken out because
[34:33] Cameron McEwen: I don't think people have paid much attention to it.
[34:37] Cameron McEwen: And recently what I found was that there were some poems and,
[34:43] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[34:44] Cameron McEwen: real poems that are attributed to Marshall.
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: good.
[34:51] Cameron McEwen: And so
[34:52] Cameron McEwen: I'm beginning to think that in his own way and in a very limited fashion.
[34:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was a poet,
[34:59] Cameron McEwen: but in a different sense from what people usually mean.
[35:02] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[35:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[35:03] Bob Dobbs: I consider McLuhan the most important poet and artist of the baby boomers'
[35:10] Bob Dobbs: experience of the
[35:12] Bob Dobbs: 60s and 70s.
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: And it was a new kind of poetry,
[35:15] Bob Dobbs: a new kind of art.
[35:17] Bob Dobbs: And he was pointing to a new kind of landscape.
[35:21] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[35:21] Bob Dobbs: you could say the digital media.
[35:22] Bob Dobbs: We talked about last time,
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: media is art forms.
[35:25] Bob Dobbs: The media are the art forms.
[35:27] Bob Dobbs: So he worked in that kind of understanding.
[35:30] Bob Dobbs: So he made art in a way that no one else did,
[35:34] Bob Dobbs: and his lasts as long as Finnegans Wake.
[35:38] Bob Dobbs: And that was good.
[35:38] Bob Dobbs: He was responding to Finney's Wake.
[35:40] Bob Dobbs: He was responding to what he thought was the greatest art before him.
[35:43] Bob Dobbs: So he kept the tradition going,
[35:46] Bob Dobbs: and he was part of that lofty dialogue,
[35:49] Bob Dobbs: or insightful,
[35:51] Bob Dobbs: or lowbrow dialogue,
[35:53] Bob Dobbs: whatever you want to say.
[35:56] Bob Dobbs: So not anybody.
[35:59] Bob Dobbs: Mick Jagger to
[36:00] Bob Dobbs: Andy Warhol or
[36:02] Bob Dobbs: Zappa, although I think Zappa was pretty good in the music part.
[36:07] Bob Dobbs: But nobody was as comprehensive as McLuhan.
[36:11] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan is the Francis Bacon or the Picasso or
[36:15] Bob Dobbs: Shakespeare of our time.
[36:17] Bob Dobbs: That's what I think now.
[36:20] Cameron McEwen: What do you think of that one?
[36:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[36:26] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if that's sort of the line that I would put him in.
[36:33] Cameron McEwen: But
[36:35] Cameron McEwen: I don't...
[36:35] Cameron McEwen: violently disagree with anything you said there.
[36:38] Cameron McEwen: The only thing I would want to look into is when you use the word art form or the term art form,
[36:48] Cameron McEwen: I think we'd need to think a lot about what is an art form.
[36:56] Cameron McEwen: It's not like a painting or poetry or dance or theater.
[37:01] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[37:02] Cameron McEwen: all of these things could be called art
[37:05] Cameron McEwen: forms where the F in form is a small F.
[37:11] Cameron McEwen: But what happens if we capitalize the F?
[37:14] Cameron McEwen: And I think when you talk about the media being the art form of our time,
[37:21] Cameron McEwen: I think you're talking about art form with a capital F.
[37:28] Cameron McEwen: What does that mean?
[37:29] Cameron McEwen: It means that we can't go from art
[37:34] Cameron McEwen: forms to a concept of art form.
[37:38] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[37:40] Cameron McEwen: we need to understand that art forms are basic.
[37:46] Cameron McEwen: They're already there.
[37:48] Cameron McEwen: And the various art forms with a small s are derivatives from it.
[37:57] Cameron McEwen: They're not something that will lead us to it.
[38:01] Cameron McEwen: Does that make sense to you?
[38:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[38:04] Bob Dobbs: So,
[38:05] Bob Dobbs: because the world where everything became art,
[38:08] Bob Dobbs: because everything was the content of the satellites,
[38:11] Bob Dobbs: you could say,
[38:12] Bob Dobbs: so everything,
[38:13] Bob Dobbs: every object,
[38:13] Bob Dobbs: every landscape,
[38:15] Bob Dobbs: or every scape was an art now.
[38:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[38:18] Bob Dobbs: that's true.
[38:19] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall found out a way to write about that and create a vision or a perspective or a detachment from it to make an artwork about it.
[38:32] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[38:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[38:33] Bob Dobbs: So then you look at what he Wright about Warhol.
[38:36] Bob Dobbs: Warhol did pop art,
[38:39] Bob Dobbs: and he goes on about
[38:40] Bob Dobbs: Warhol took his present.
[38:42] Bob Dobbs: He made an art form out of his present,
[38:44] Bob Dobbs: which was called the factory back then when he had this place that people come and do anything,
[38:49] Bob Dobbs: and he'd videotape them or film them.
[38:53] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan knew how to put that in a framework and show,
[38:57] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[38:57] Bob Dobbs: that's a knee-jerk effect.
[38:59] Bob Dobbs: Warhol is an effect.
[39:00] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't offer perception.
[39:03] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan came up with a way to offer perception,
[39:07] Bob Dobbs: just the way advertising was an art form but didn't offer perception.
[39:10] Bob Dobbs: So he spoke about Warhol and everything else that happened with the most amazing framework or capital F form than anybody else did.
[39:21] Bob Dobbs: Most other people still don't know what to say about Warhol.
[39:25] Bob Dobbs: They waffle on whether he was an artist or not.
[39:27] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan didn't know precisely.
[39:29] Bob Dobbs: if you take the president as an art form
[39:31] Bob Dobbs: You're dealing with the electric now,
[39:33] Bob Dobbs: which has no content,
[39:34] Bob Dobbs: and there is no present.
[39:36] Bob Dobbs: So therefore,
[39:36] Bob Dobbs: the present becomes art form.
[39:38] Bob Dobbs: That's the last thing we recognize,
[39:40] Bob Dobbs: that we could know.
[39:43] Cameron McEwen: You're using the word perception there to be the correlate of art form.
[39:53] Cameron McEwen: I think that's correct.
[39:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:56] Bob Dobbs: see,
[39:57] Bob Dobbs: he could write about and fit it into a system.
[40:00] Bob Dobbs: system in quotes about anything that was going on.
[40:03] Bob Dobbs: No one else could do that.
[40:04] Bob Dobbs: They'd fall back on value judgments about what was going on.
[40:07] Bob Dobbs: He talked technically.
[40:09] Bob Dobbs: He wrote technically.
[40:10] Bob Dobbs: And it all fit his categorization,
[40:13] Bob Dobbs: which was the role of the book.
[40:16] Bob Dobbs: The book says,
[40:17] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[40:17] Bob Dobbs: there it is.
[40:17] Bob Dobbs: Do you have to deal with that?
[40:20] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry,
[40:21] Cameron McEwen: that's the dog,
[40:22] Cameron McEwen: right?
[40:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[40:23] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.
[40:25] Bob Dobbs: Do what you have to do.
[40:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[40:28] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[40:28] Cameron McEwen: okay.
[40:29] Cameron McEwen: Take it.
[40:30] Cameron McEwen: be quiet be quiet he has an he has an interesting way of getting what he wants he just terrorizes
[40:43] Bob Dobbs: Now he's whining.
[40:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[40:46] Cameron McEwen: because he knows that he's going to get his food,
[40:51] Cameron McEwen: and he's having trouble.
[40:53] Cameron McEwen: Hey,
[40:58] Cameron McEwen: relax,
[40:59] Cameron McEwen: relax.
[41:00] Cameron McEwen: He's a good dog,
[41:01] Cameron McEwen: that one.
[41:03] Cameron McEwen: That's Kennedy,
[41:04] Cameron McEwen: who's blind in one eye,
[41:06] Cameron McEwen: but he just tears around.
[41:07] Cameron McEwen: You would think a dog with no depth perception would keep.
[41:13] Cameron McEwen: banging into things if they're running fast,
[41:16] Bob Dobbs: but not him.
[41:16] Bob Dobbs: He's got it down.
[41:17] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[41:19] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[41:19] Cameron McEwen: I'll be done with this in a couple seconds.
[41:22] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[41:23] Cameron McEwen: Excuse me for...
[41:25] Bob Dobbs: He's the Jacques Lusseyran of the dog kingdom.
[41:29] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[41:30] Cameron McEwen: That is absolutely right.
[41:36] Bob Dobbs: Tactility squared.
[41:37] Bob Dobbs: Is it Jacques Lusseyran?
[41:39] Bob Dobbs: Something Gilson.
[41:40] Bob Dobbs: Jay somebody.
[41:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[41:42] Cameron McEwen: Jacques.
[41:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:43] Bob Dobbs: Jacques Lusseyran.
[41:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[41:53] Cameron McEwen: I'm in the final phase.
[41:55] Cameron McEwen: Sorry.
[42:07] Bob Dobbs: Is he celebrating that you're giving him food?
[42:11] Cameron McEwen: Sorry?
[42:11] Bob Dobbs: He's celebrating that you're giving him food.
[42:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[42:14] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[42:15] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[42:15] Cameron McEwen: He loves that.
[42:16] Cameron McEwen: And then he spent his entire life with another dog,
[42:25] Cameron McEwen: Miles,
[42:26] Cameron McEwen: who was a couple years older.
[42:28] Cameron McEwen: And when Miles ate,
[42:30] Cameron McEwen: he always barked like this.
[42:32] Cameron McEwen: And Kennedy never did.
[42:34] Cameron McEwen: But then Miles died,
[42:36] Cameron McEwen: and Kennedy started to bark just like Miles did.
[42:43] Cameron McEwen: So I'm just mixing up their stuff.
[42:45] Cameron McEwen: The owners,
[42:45] Bob Dobbs: they were in the 1963,
[42:49] Bob Dobbs: Miles Davis and
[42:50] Bob Dobbs: John Kennedy.
[42:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[42:54] Bob Dobbs: They named their dogs after those guys.
[42:56] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[43:04] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[43:04] Cameron McEwen: boys,
[43:05] Cameron McEwen: here we go.
[43:05] Cameron McEwen: There you go.
[43:07] Cameron McEwen: There you go.
[43:08] Bob Dobbs: Go,
[43:09] Bob Dobbs: go.
[43:13] Cameron McEwen: All right,
[43:14] Cameron McEwen: they'll be quiet now.
[43:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[43:16] Bob Dobbs: so we were saying,
[43:17] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[43:17] Bob Dobbs: Tom about art perception.
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: people used to say,
[43:23] Bob Dobbs: you can bring up any topic with McLuhan,
[43:25] Bob Dobbs: he's got something to say about it.
[43:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[43:27] Bob Dobbs: it was more than that.
[43:28] Bob Dobbs: He had a system,
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: He could put on a system,
[43:31] Bob Dobbs: a pagan secular system.
[43:34] Bob Dobbs: And what was interesting was to find out the system and see how he applied it like a formula all over the place.
[43:42] Cameron McEwen: once you crack his code that was what was interesting so think how absurd it would be if um you had somebody that was doing physics let's say and uh then you come to him and you say well you know what do you think is
[43:58] Cameron McEwen: going on here physically and then if he said well um uh physics doesn't apply to them you would think it was ridiculous the same with chemistry or say
[44:11] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[44:11] Cameron McEwen: or if you come up to a biologist and you say,
[44:15] Cameron McEwen: look,
[44:15] Cameron McEwen: here's this microbe,
[44:17] Cameron McEwen: what do you think's going on?
[44:18] Cameron McEwen: He says,
[44:18] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[44:19] Cameron McEwen: biology doesn't deal with that.
[44:21] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[44:22] Cameron McEwen: it would make no sense whatsoever.
[44:24] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about is sort of a mark of talking sense.
[44:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[44:31] Cameron McEwen: There's no such thing as,
[44:32] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[44:32] Cameron McEwen: that doesn't fit into my system or something.
[44:35] Cameron McEwen: That's ridiculous.
[44:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[44:37] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan did,
[44:38] Bob Dobbs: he countered that and he got in trouble for it.
[44:42] Bob Dobbs: He violated that bias by saying that.
[44:46] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[44:46] Cameron McEwen: definitely,
[44:48] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[44:48] Cameron McEwen: He said that himself,
[44:50] Cameron McEwen: right,
[44:50] Cameron McEwen: that his bias was interested in all biases.
[44:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[44:55] Bob Dobbs: He said that was the bias of our age.
[44:56] Bob Dobbs: He was looking at the bias of everything else.
[44:59] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[45:00] Cameron McEwen: correct,
[45:02] Cameron McEwen: which makes tremendous sense.
[45:05] Cameron McEwen: And it not only makes sense,
[45:07] Cameron McEwen: it's the only conceivable way of us having peace.
[45:11] Cameron McEwen: peace.
[45:12] Cameron McEwen: P-E-A-C-E.
[45:15] Cameron McEwen: Unless you're able to approach literally everything and everybody in some mode of dialogue,
[45:24] Cameron McEwen: then there will never be peace because the only way to come,
[45:30] Cameron McEwen: if you can't dialogue,
[45:31] Cameron McEwen: the only way to come to terms with a situation like that is violently to say,
[45:40] Cameron McEwen: I know
[45:41] Cameron McEwen: the truth of this or i know the reality of this or um i've decided that this person can't be talked to and uh you don't have peace that's right the um
[46:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[46:03] Bob Dobbs: that's what in the Finding Nothing book,
[46:08] Bob Dobbs: Betts admires the professors being open to the non-academic artists in the streets of Vancouver.
[46:16] Bob Dobbs: They were trying to apply,
[46:18] Bob Dobbs: they were inspired maybe by McLuhan,
[46:19] Bob Dobbs: and oh,
[46:20] Bob Dobbs: geez,
[46:20] Bob Dobbs: everything is art now,
[46:21] Bob Dobbs: so let's talk to anybody.
[46:24] Bob Dobbs: puts on a pose of creating something.
[46:30] Bob Dobbs: So you wouldn't see that in Toronto.
[46:32] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[46:32] Bob Dobbs: no,
[46:33] Bob Dobbs: everything was fragmented and hierarchized,
[46:37] Bob Dobbs: and you just end up listening to Neil Young in Yorkville.
[46:43] Bob Dobbs: That's all you had,
[46:45] Bob Dobbs: since the academics wouldn't talk to you.
[46:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[46:48] Cameron McEwen: well,
[46:48] Cameron McEwen: you had difference.
[46:49] Cameron McEwen: And the thing about Toronto is it's so big.
[46:53] Cameron McEwen: And there's the different academies and the different schools of thought.
[47:01] Cameron McEwen: It's a mishmash rather than anti-environment where you can have dialogue of the high and the low and the in and the out.
[47:11] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan attempted to give a program of dialogue for people there,
[47:16] Bob Dobbs: and they didn't like it.
[47:17] Cameron McEwen: Go ahead.
[47:19] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[47:19] Bob Dobbs: the establishment didn't like it.
[47:21] Bob Dobbs: You know that he was censored in Parliament by the Governor General.
[47:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[47:27] Cameron McEwen: no.
[47:28] Cameron McEwen: The Governor General isn't in Parliament.
[47:33] Bob Dobbs: No,
[47:34] Bob Dobbs: he made a special address or something.
[47:37] Bob Dobbs: Message.
[47:38] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[47:39] Bob Dobbs: Parliament's got to do something about this guy.
[47:41] Bob Dobbs: He's out of control.
[47:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[47:44] Cameron McEwen: maybe.
[47:47] Bob Dobbs: Have I brought that up before?
[47:48] Bob Dobbs: I think I have.
[47:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[47:51] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[47:52] Cameron McEwen: didn't Vanier head the Royal Commission in 1950 or 1951?
[48:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[48:00] Bob Dobbs: maybe.
[48:01] Cameron McEwen: Canadian culture.
[48:02] Cameron McEwen: And then
[48:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was vociferous about its failings.
[48:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[48:10] Bob Dobbs: he said it just illustrates the Canadian cultural tradition that when a problem comes up,
[48:15] Bob Dobbs: you have a commission about it.
[48:17] Bob Dobbs: That was a Canadian cultural response.
[48:20] Bob Dobbs: It was like an art form in itself in Canada's culture.
[48:23] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[48:24] Bob Dobbs: I guess they didn't like that.
[48:27] Bob Dobbs: So,
[48:27] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[48:28] Bob Dobbs: so let's go into page 103.
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: sorry,
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: We got off.
[48:34] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[48:34] Cameron McEwen: I should say,
[48:35] Cameron McEwen: remember in the period you're talking about in Vancouver,
[48:41] Cameron McEwen: that's when Maury Schaefer was there.
[48:46] Bob Dobbs: Maury Schaefer?
[48:48] Bob Dobbs: Schaefer,
[48:48] Bob Dobbs: you mean the 60 Minutes?
[48:50] Cameron McEwen: No,
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: no,
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: no,
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: no,
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: no,
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: the music guy.
[48:52] Cameron McEwen: Maybe I'm...
[48:53] Bob Dobbs: No,
[48:54] Bob Dobbs: Murray Schafer.
[48:55] Cameron McEwen: Murray,
[48:56] Cameron McEwen: Murray,
[48:56] Cameron McEwen: that's what I meant.
[48:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[48:59] Cameron McEwen: And his theory from McLuhan was that the cityscape is already music,
[49:09] Cameron McEwen: so closely related to Cage's ideas,
[49:11] Cameron McEwen: right?
[49:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[49:13] Cameron McEwen: But it fits with this idea of universal dialogue.
[49:19] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[49:19] Bob Dobbs: And,
[49:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: Murray Schafer valuable statement about being a student of McLuhan in 51 or so,
[49:27] Bob Dobbs: way back there,
[49:28] Bob Dobbs: he said McLuhan taught that
[49:31] Bob Dobbs: Fittings Wake was not a book,
[49:33] Bob Dobbs: it was a radio program.
[49:34] Bob Dobbs: And then Murray goes on to do a lot of his art on the radio,
[49:38] Bob Dobbs: on CBC,
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: probably inspired by McLuhan notion that
[49:44] Bob Dobbs: Fittings Wake was not a book,
[49:46] Bob Dobbs: it was a radio program.
[49:49] Cameron McEwen: broadens the or gets rid of the hierarchies and you start looking at the city as music absolutely and then and then and the noise is music yeah and uh the idea that um you that there's a dialogue going on with between all sounds so
[50:08] Cameron McEwen: that's a very Finnegans Wake yeah idea yeah that's um every sound and every word and every punctuation mark
[50:17] Cameron McEwen: is already dialogue in some sense.
[50:21] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[50:22] Bob Dobbs: So,
[50:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[50:25] Bob Dobbs: did Murray Schafer,
[50:26] Bob Dobbs: did he grow up in Vancouver?
[50:29] Cameron McEwen: No,
[50:29] Cameron McEwen: no.
[50:30] Cameron McEwen: He's an Ontario kid.
[50:32] Bob Dobbs: But you associated him with the
[50:34] Bob Dobbs: Vancouver scene.
[50:36] Cameron McEwen: No,
[50:37] Cameron McEwen: he was at Simon Fraser University for,
[50:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,
[50:42] Cameron McEwen: I think 10 or
[50:43] Cameron McEwen: 20 years.
[50:44] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[50:44] Bob Dobbs: he taught there.
[50:45] Cameron McEwen: That's where he,
[50:46] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[50:46] Cameron McEwen: That's where he did most of his theoretical work.
[50:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[50:52] Cameron McEwen: He had a program there of teams of people that would make recordings of the cityscape.
[51:03] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[51:04] Cameron McEwen: And they would do that all over the world,
[51:06] Cameron McEwen: but the main place they did it was Vancouver.
[51:09] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[51:09] Bob Dobbs: looking at the wiki on him,
[51:14] Bob Dobbs: he was born in Sarnia,
[51:17] Bob Dobbs: Ontario.
[51:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[51:18] Bob Dobbs: his music education theories are followed around the world.
[51:21] Bob Dobbs: He started Soundscape Studies at Simon Fraser University in the
[51:25] Bob Dobbs: 1960s. Yeah,
[51:26] Bob Dobbs: so that's where he is.
[51:26] Cameron McEwen: There you go.
[51:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[51:28] Cameron McEwen: And how long did he stay there?
[51:30] Cameron McEwen: At least 10 years,
[51:31] Cameron McEwen: I think.
[51:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[51:33] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't say.
[51:36] Bob Dobbs: It's a skimpy outline of his biography.
[51:39] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh,
[51:40] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[51:41] Bob Dobbs: Unless there's a list at the bottom here,
[51:44] Bob Dobbs: compositions,
[51:45] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of stuff.
[51:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[51:47] Cameron McEwen: no,
[51:47] Cameron McEwen: it won't say.
[51:49] Bob Dobbs: Choir,
[51:49] Bob Dobbs: voice,
[51:50] Bob Dobbs: let's see,
[51:51] Bob Dobbs: written works.
[51:54] Bob Dobbs: No,
[51:54] Bob Dobbs: it doesn't go too much into his academia,
[51:58] Bob Dobbs: so I guess he did it all at Simon Fraser,
[52:00] Bob Dobbs: basically.
[52:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[52:02] Cameron McEwen: that's where he taught at Simon Fraser,
[52:05] Cameron McEwen: I believe,
[52:05] Cameron McEwen: for
[52:06] Cameron McEwen: 15 or more years.
[52:08] Cameron McEwen: And then he decided that he wanted to establish a kind of,
[52:18] Cameron McEwen: what could I say,
[52:20] Cameron McEwen: an oasis of music that would include the unplanned sounds of nature.
[52:29] Cameron McEwen: And that's what he did at his farm.
[52:31] Cameron McEwen: in
[52:31] Cameron McEwen: Ontario. Yeah,
[52:33] Bob Dobbs: here's what it is.
[52:35] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?
[52:36] Bob Dobbs: He did it at a farm in Ontario?
[52:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[52:38] Cameron McEwen: that's where he went after Simon Fraser.
[52:41] Cameron McEwen: He bought a farm in
[52:42] Cameron McEwen: Ontario and just went there.
[52:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[52:45] Bob Dobbs: so it says here,
[52:46] Bob Dobbs: the World Soundscape Project was established.
[52:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[52:49] Cameron McEwen: that's at SFU.
[52:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[52:51] Bob Dobbs: it was an educational research group by
[52:54] Bob Dobbs: Murray at Simon Fraser during the late 60s and early 70s.
[52:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[53:02] Bob Dobbs: It grew out of Schaefer's initial attempt to draw attention to the sonic environment through a course in noise pollution,
[53:06] Bob Dobbs: as well as from his personal distaste for the more raucous aspects of Vancouver's rapidly changing soundscape.
[53:13] Bob Dobbs: This work resulted in two small educational booklets.
[53:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[53:17] Cameron McEwen: so did the guy that you mentioned before,
[53:21] Cameron McEwen: Betts,
[53:22] Cameron McEwen: I think you said,
[53:24] Cameron McEwen: does he mention Schaefer being part of that scene?
[53:27] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.
[53:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[53:28] Cameron McEwen: because,
[53:29] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[53:29] Cameron McEwen: look at that.
[53:30] Cameron McEwen: That's crazy,
[53:31] Cameron McEwen: right?
[53:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[53:31] Cameron McEwen: He was very important to that scene because he was introducing this idea that there is already dialogue in the environment going on between sounds,
[53:42] Cameron McEwen: right?
[53:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[53:44] Cameron McEwen: And between all human actions and their surrounding sounds.
[53:50] Cameron McEwen: So that's a very
[53:52] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan idea.
[53:54] Cameron McEwen: And you can see that in...
[53:59] Cameron McEwen: the idea that Betts was talking about of street people dialoguing with the academy and with an exchange of information going on.
[54:11] Cameron McEwen: That's dialogue.
[54:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[54:13] Bob Dobbs: it sounds like they say here his personal distaste for the more raucous aspects of Vancouver's rapidly changing soundscape.
[54:21] Bob Dobbs: Sounds like Murray didn't like what this book,
[54:24] Bob Dobbs: Betts'
[54:25] Bob Dobbs: book,
[54:25] Bob Dobbs: is about.
[54:30] Bob Dobbs: He probably thought there was a lot too much noise culturally from these people.
[54:32] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[54:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that that is talking about cultural noise.
[54:37] Cameron McEwen: He might have been talking about the idea that just as humans don't pay any attention to light pollution,
[54:47] Cameron McEwen: they don't pay any attention to noise pollution.
[54:50] Cameron McEwen: So for hundreds of thousands of years,
[54:53] Cameron McEwen: humans were geared into their...
[54:56] Cameron McEwen: acoustic environment in a way where there was constant feedback.
[55:03] Cameron McEwen: And modern humans in their stupidity have decided that the only feedback they want is from themselves.
[55:12] Cameron McEwen: And so everybody's going around listening to what some other human put on the Internet or something.
[55:20] Bob Dobbs: So they have a picture here of a bunch of his colleagues at...
[55:25] Bob Dobbs: Simon Fraser,
[55:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't recognize one name from the,
[55:29] Bob Dobbs: but that's his book.
[55:30] Bob Dobbs: So
[55:31] Bob Dobbs: I think he,
[55:32] Bob Dobbs: maybe he was concentrating on poetry and art,
[55:36] Bob Dobbs: not music.
[55:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[55:38] Cameron McEwen: Unfortunately,
[55:39] Cameron McEwen: right?
[55:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[55:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[55:41] Bob Dobbs: I'll double check the book.
[55:43] Cameron McEwen: Maybe he'll look into that.
[55:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[55:45] Bob Dobbs: I'll look into the book just to make sure,
[55:46] Bob Dobbs: but there's certainly nothing much about Schaefer that I recall reading the book,
[55:52] Bob Dobbs: and I read it closely.
[55:53] Bob Dobbs: you
[55:54] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[55:54] Bob Dobbs: so we're,
[55:55] Bob Dobbs: we got sidetracked into
[55:57] Bob Dobbs: Murray Schafer.
[55:59] Bob Dobbs: That's all right.
[55:59] Bob Dobbs: So we're now doing
[56:01] Bob Dobbs: 103, and I said we left off talking about Jung and the archetype.
[56:08] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,
[56:10] Cameron McEwen: as I have mentioned to you offline,
[56:15] Cameron McEwen: I'm reading a lot of
[56:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan unpublished stuff from the 40s,
[56:21] Cameron McEwen: and there's a lot of discussion of Jung in those writings.
[56:26] Bob Dobbs: That's interesting.
[56:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[56:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[56:29] Bob Dobbs: so as I look down
[56:36] Bob Dobbs: 104, 105,
[56:37] Bob Dobbs: 106,
[56:38] Cameron McEwen: we did a lot of this stuff.
[56:39] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[56:40] Cameron McEwen: that's because War and Peace in the Global Village,
[56:43] Cameron McEwen: that concluding passage,
[56:45] Cameron McEwen: you also quoted earlier in the book.
[56:48] Cameron McEwen: I think it's around page
[56:50] Cameron McEwen: 80, 82 maybe.
[56:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[56:53] Cameron McEwen: And so we've talked about this quotation.
[56:57] Cameron McEwen: But the fact that you've reused it must mean that you understand that passage in different contexts of McLuhan thought.
[57:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[57:13] Bob Dobbs: so we did all this stuff about the Connubial Bliss and the...
[57:25] Bob Dobbs: interaction of media as animals.
[57:29] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to do that.
[57:30] Bob Dobbs: So I'm looking for where.
[57:31] Bob Dobbs: So what I come up with is
[57:34] Bob Dobbs: 103. I'm saying in the blue part,
[57:39] Bob Dobbs: my casual talk,
[57:42] Bob Dobbs: I say
[57:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan highlighting another angle,
[57:49] Bob Dobbs: the archetypal power.
[57:51] Bob Dobbs: Not many people knew that McLuhan had one-upped Jung.
[57:55] Bob Dobbs: I have that,
[57:56] Bob Dobbs: then I say,
[57:57] Bob Dobbs: I have that excellent quotation by William Irwin Thompson where he runs through the different conceptual all-at-onceness.
[58:02] Bob Dobbs: This is
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: Sigmund Freud,
[58:04] Bob Dobbs: Carl Jung,
[58:05] Bob Dobbs: Claude Lévi-Strauss,
[58:06] Bob Dobbs: Gregory Bateson,
[58:07] Bob Dobbs: but he leaves out McLuhan.
[58:09] Bob Dobbs: He should know better.
[58:10] Bob Dobbs: Frank Zingrone,
[58:11] Bob Dobbs: a longtime friend and colleague of Thompson,
[58:13] Bob Dobbs: is smart enough to notice.
[58:14] Bob Dobbs: Quote,
[58:17] Bob Dobbs: Frank says,
[58:18] Bob Dobbs: just a minute,
[58:19] Bob Dobbs: I hit the thing.
[58:20] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[58:20] Bob Dobbs: hmm,
[58:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is going past Jung.
[58:24] Bob Dobbs: And he's trying to talk about it.
[58:26] Bob Dobbs: And Zingrone marvels,
[58:27] Bob Dobbs: who would have thought anyone could alter the idea of an archetype after the dominance of that area by Jung?
[58:33] Bob Dobbs: And then I say McLuhan did that.
[58:36] Bob Dobbs: So that's where we left off.
[58:38] Bob Dobbs: Is there anything you want to say about
[58:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan idea of archetype that's Posthuman?
[58:44] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[58:45] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[58:45] Cameron McEwen: I don't like the idea of Posthuman.
[58:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't like the idea of going past.
[58:52] Cameron McEwen: Jung,
[58:52] Cameron McEwen: these things are chronological.
[58:55] Cameron McEwen: So
[58:56] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan took up the notion of archetype and showed that it was in constant dialogue with cliché.
[59:10] Cameron McEwen: Carl Jung helped him to get there.
[59:14] Cameron McEwen: I would just say that anybody who's interested in
[59:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan needs to understand
[59:21] Cameron McEwen: something of Jung,
[59:23] Cameron McEwen: needs to understand that Jung was topical at the University of Toronto at that time.
[59:31] Cameron McEwen: Northrop Frye was very interested in Jung for decades.
[59:35] Cameron McEwen: So
[59:37] Cameron McEwen: Jung is somebody that needs to be taken seriously by anybody that wants to understand McLuhan,
[59:44] Cameron McEwen: no question about that.
[59:46] Bob Dobbs: So the archetypes that Young talked about...
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: people think are in the brain or in the collective unconscious,
[59:54] Bob Dobbs: wherever that is.
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: They're in humans and they're Anthropomorphic Physical images.
[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:00:01] Cameron McEwen: but that's ridiculous.
[1:00:03] Cameron McEwen: That's a ridiculous way to read Jung.
[1:00:05] Cameron McEwen: It's the exact opposite.
[1:00:07] Cameron McEwen: The archetypes are dominant.
[1:00:10] Cameron McEwen: That is to say that they're divine-like figures that have already Patrick Peyton everything that humans do.
[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: but he doesn't have radio and TV as archetypes in there,
[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: does he?
[1:00:22] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:00:22] Cameron McEwen: of course not.
[1:00:23] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[1:00:25] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I say McLuhan said,
[1:00:27] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:00:27] Bob Dobbs: the archetype isn't some inky mystical thing in our collective unconscious or in our brains or something.
[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: It is the environments we use,
[1:00:36] Bob Dobbs: and we become numb to them.
[1:00:39] Bob Dobbs: So they have an effect on us that we don't notice.
[1:00:42] Bob Dobbs: Sure.
[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: That's why McLuhan liked the idea of the collective unconscious.
[1:00:48] Cameron McEwen: Which he took to be something like language.
[1:00:51] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: but then he said we now were in a collective conscious situation.
[1:00:56] Bob Dobbs: And how we got to that was the interesting...
[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:01:00] Bob Dobbs: Posthuman situation.
[1:01:02] Bob Dobbs: He said that the unconscious is what people commercialized,
[1:01:05] Bob Dobbs: marketed to people,
[1:01:07] Bob Dobbs: the somnambulist.
[1:01:09] Bob Dobbs: When we were actually in a collective consciousness that Leonard Cohen was trying to get at in his 93 song about everybody knows.
[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: You know that song where he says everybody knows?
[1:01:21] Bob Dobbs: And I think there's an earlier song where he says something similar.
[1:01:23] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan was explaining what this...
[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: environmental situation of collective consciousness was.
[1:01:30] Bob Dobbs: And that meant getting out of the assumption that people were motivated by subconscious forces.
[1:01:37] Bob Dobbs: The media were the subconscious forces.
[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: They were in your environment.
[1:01:41] Bob Dobbs: They could be noticed and looked at,
[1:01:43] Bob Dobbs: not some vague ideas in your dreams or something or in the cultural archetypes that were in poems and art and that that Jung talked about.
[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: that.
[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: My problem with that is that what Jung was trying to do was communicate something.
[1:02:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to communicate something.
[1:02:06] Cameron McEwen: And I don't know that either one of them were all that successful in doing it.
[1:02:11] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:02:12] Cameron McEwen: it's a very difficult thing to actually communicate the possibility of the universe making sense.
[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: And so it's not as if
[1:02:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was able to make these things crystal clear and pass it on to everybody.
[1:02:39] Cameron McEwen: The McLuhan industry is dedicated to forgetting about McLuhan as fast as it can.
[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: And outside of the McLuhan industry,
[1:02:50] Cameron McEwen: nobody's paying any attention to him at all.
[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: So...
[1:02:54] Bob Dobbs: So I claim to apply this new Posthuman aspect of occlusion this way.
[1:03:01] Bob Dobbs: When people,
[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: if you start questioning what's the unconscious in that,
[1:03:04] Bob Dobbs: they'll have theories about it,
[1:03:06] Bob Dobbs: and ultimately they don't know what it is,
[1:03:08] Bob Dobbs: but they think they're supposed to be controlled by it.
[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: So I said,
[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: how about looking at your unconscious as the couch in your living room,
[1:03:15] Bob Dobbs: the tables,
[1:03:16] Bob Dobbs: and then the radio and TV.
[1:03:18] Bob Dobbs: Now those are real things,
[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: and there are...
[1:03:23] Bob Dobbs: having effects on you that you're not aware of.
[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: They're having effects on everybody.
[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: So why not call that the unconscious rather than strange psychological processes?
[1:03:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:03:36] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:03:36] Cameron McEwen: I don't think you want to say that because your table is having unconscious effects on you,
[1:03:45] Cameron McEwen: the material table is the ultimate reality of the universe.
[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm not saying the ultimate reality,
[1:03:53] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying this is a practical application of the idea of the unconscious.
[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: Because there's a lot of mysticism or babble,
[1:04:00] Bob Dobbs: psychobabble,
[1:04:01] Bob Dobbs: that comes out of
[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: Jung and Freud and all those other psychologies that came after Jung,
[1:04:06] Bob Dobbs: the human potential movement stuff.
[1:04:09] Bob Dobbs: What about the anti-environment themselves that everybody can see,
[1:04:13] Bob Dobbs: but they don't think about it or don't know how to think about it?
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: Just look at that as our unconscious.
[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: And so that usually sparks...
[1:04:19] Bob Dobbs: people's interest.
[1:04:21] Cameron McEwen: That's how I get them interested in the clone.
[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true,
[1:04:23] Cameron McEwen: but when you say,
[1:04:24] Cameron McEwen: let's look at that,
[1:04:28] Cameron McEwen: apparently you mean the physical universe around us,
[1:04:34] Cameron McEwen: but just the sciences for thousands,
[1:04:44] Cameron McEwen: tens of thousands,
[1:04:46] Cameron McEwen: maybe even hundreds of thousands of years,
[1:04:48] Cameron McEwen: when they
[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: When people looked at that,
[1:04:51] Cameron McEwen: meaning the physical universe,
[1:04:54] Cameron McEwen: they knew very well what they were talking about,
[1:04:57] Cameron McEwen: trees and rocks and water and clouds and all that sort of stuff,
[1:05:02] Cameron McEwen: but they didn't know what it was.
[1:05:04] Cameron McEwen: So you're talking about people looking at their built environment and saying,
[1:05:12] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:05:12] Cameron McEwen: people have to understand that,
[1:05:15] Cameron McEwen: and especially they have to understand it in terms of art.
[1:05:17] Cameron McEwen: forms.
[1:05:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:05:18] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:05:19] Cameron McEwen: But does anybody really know what an art form is?
[1:05:22] Cameron McEwen: Any more than they know what an archetype is?
[1:05:24] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.
[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:05:26] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used to call it a teaching machine,
[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: and I like that term.
[1:05:29] Bob Dobbs: Art is a teaching machine.
[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: So your coach,
[1:05:31] Bob Dobbs: your setup in your living room is a teaching machine.
[1:05:34] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: And you can talk about it and point it out to people.
[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: But where does that get you?
[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: It makes them think they've become aware of something.
[1:05:43] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:05:44] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:05:44] Cameron McEwen: you know.
[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: So then they understand media ecology.
[1:05:48] Cameron McEwen: That's like advertising or something.
[1:05:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:05:50] Bob Dobbs: and then they join Bob in demanding a media fast.
[1:05:55] Bob Dobbs: They've become conscious.
[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: They've become really woke.
[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: See,
[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: that's the woke I would recommend if I was ever mingled with the Wimsatt that are out there today.
[1:06:05] Bob Dobbs: I'd bring in what we should be woke about.
[1:06:08] Bob Dobbs: And I'd call it the people don't think of that as the unconscious,
[1:06:12] Bob Dobbs: these anti-environment.
[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: They think of the content as
[1:06:16] Bob Dobbs: MKUltra CIA mind control things that are making people brain dead or stupid or duped.
[1:06:23] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:06:23] Bob Dobbs: that's far from what's going on.
[1:06:25] Bob Dobbs: That's not what's duping people.
[1:06:26] Bob Dobbs: that way people
[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: They study the content to see what is tricking them.
[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: That's how they talk about these TV shows.
[1:06:34] Bob Dobbs: They say,
[1:06:34] Bob Dobbs: see what they're trying to do to us?
[1:06:35] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to tell us this,
[1:06:36] Bob Dobbs: trying to tell us that.
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: They're very sophisticated about the content,
[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know anything about the formal dynamics that McLuhan was pointing out.
[1:06:44] Bob Dobbs: So you can take over any conversation with these ideas.
[1:06:48] Cameron McEwen: That's why
[1:06:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan argued against paying attention to hidden persuaders,
[1:06:54] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:55] Bob Dobbs: right.
[1:06:55] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't interested in that.
[1:06:58] Cameron McEwen: You and I completely agree on this sort of stuff.
[1:07:01] Cameron McEwen: It's just that for me,
[1:07:04] Cameron McEwen: the most important thing is the connubial of these things.
[1:07:08] Cameron McEwen: Whereas to me,
[1:07:10] Cameron McEwen: when you are talking about sort of the new woke,
[1:07:15] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that the new woke includes deep questions.
[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: Say it again,
[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: you don't know if they're woke or in his questions?
[1:07:25] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:07:26] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about being Urwick,
[1:07:30] Cameron McEwen: I think is a nice word you used,
[1:07:33] Cameron McEwen: to go beyond woke.
[1:07:36] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:07:36] Cameron McEwen: I'm asking how far is connubial in your notion of the Urwick?
[1:07:47] Cameron McEwen: Because to me it seems more like an answer than a question.
[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: it'll lead...
[1:07:55] Bob Dobbs: It's an answer that gets them thinking they're getting somewhere.
[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: Then they bump into the questions.
[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: So you fool them.
[1:08:01] Bob Dobbs: They get into,
[1:08:02] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:08:02] Bob Dobbs: this makes sense.
[1:08:03] Bob Dobbs: I can make something out of this,
[1:08:05] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: Then they go and they try to apply for a couple weeks,
[1:08:08] Bob Dobbs: and they come back and explain all the backfirings and complications that happened.
[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: It didn't work.
[1:08:13] Bob Dobbs: And then we go into why it didn't work,
[1:08:16] Bob Dobbs: why you thought it was an answer.
[1:08:18] Bob Dobbs: And then that's how we get to the connubial.
[1:08:23] Cameron McEwen: So it's a strategy.
[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: it's a Dobsonian strategy.
[1:08:27] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:08:28] Bob Dobbs: That's the rhetorician.
[1:08:29] Bob Dobbs: That's what I do.
[1:08:31] Bob Dobbs: Always trying to think up new ways.
[1:08:33] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:08:35] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan wrote to Playboy,
[1:08:36] Bob Dobbs: I think I sent it to you,
[1:08:37] Bob Dobbs: in 1970,
[1:08:38] Bob Dobbs: saying that
[1:08:40] Bob Dobbs: Elliot's auditory imagination was normal,
[1:08:43] Bob Dobbs: cliche awareness.
[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: In 1970,
[1:08:46] Bob Dobbs: that was due to music and the taking over of the music anti-environment the 50s and 60s.
[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: And then he says,
[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: but what is not in the public awareness yet is fitting his wake.
[1:09:01] Bob Dobbs: That was still not noticed,
[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: just as
[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: Eliot's acoustic imagination was not noticed in,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: the 20s and
[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: 30s. But by the 60s,
[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: people thought that was their big revelation.
[1:09:15] Bob Dobbs: They were tuning into their audio spaces,
[1:09:18] Bob Dobbs: getting out of their visual space.
[1:09:20] Bob Dobbs: So...
[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: Elliot came into his day.
[1:09:25] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:09:26] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting that,
[1:09:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:09:27] Bob Dobbs: the great title,
[1:09:28] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake,
[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: here it is 50 years later from that Playboy letter,
[1:09:32] Bob Dobbs: and the word woke comes into the language.
[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: And it's like,
[1:09:37] Bob Dobbs: that is the popular perception of
[1:09:41] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake,
[1:09:43] Bob Dobbs: now becoming cliche awareness.
[1:09:47] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:09:47] Bob Dobbs: this leads to all kinds of distortions and tiger traps and elephant cages,
[1:09:51] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan used to say.
[1:09:53] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:09:55] Bob Dobbs: I would say,
[1:09:56] Bob Dobbs: as a headline,
[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: Dobbs announces that
[1:10:00] Bob Dobbs: Finney's Wake is now ordinary awareness.
[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: What do you mean by that,
[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: Mr.
[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: Dobbs?
[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: Where do you get that?
[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:10:05] Bob Dobbs: look,
[1:10:05] Bob Dobbs: everybody's using the word wake or woke.
[1:10:08] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else ever used it that way or even claimed they were doing it.
[1:10:11] Bob Dobbs: And the book that laid out the map to that was Finney's Wake.
[1:10:14] Bob Dobbs: So everybody's talking Finney's Wake.
[1:10:17] Bob Dobbs: They may not know it,
[1:10:18] Bob Dobbs: but it's become ordinary awareness.
[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: And you think of the cultural...
[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: Pattern recognition,
[1:10:23] Bob Dobbs: the hyper pattern recognition that's going on every day by people in different media anti-environment and having opinions about whatever their insights are,
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: that's Finnegans Wake.
[1:10:33] Bob Dobbs: That's the way we live today.
[1:10:36] Bob Dobbs: There's millions of insights and patterns offered in Finnegans Wake,
[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: which was the condition people are in today that Finnegans Wake predicted.
[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was on
[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: Front Page Challenge about 1970.
[1:10:51] Bob Dobbs: Remember that show?
[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: Front Page Challenge?
[1:10:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: And he was a topic,
[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: a news story,
[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: and then they guessed him or didn't,
[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: and then they bring him on.
[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: He talks to people.
[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: as you remember,
[1:11:03] Bob Dobbs: they said something.
[1:11:04] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:11:04] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:11:04] Bob Dobbs: businessmen are interested in ideas.
[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: at that point,
[1:11:08] Bob Dobbs: the counterculture and everybody else was running around complaining about businessmen and capitalists.
[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: They weren't interested in ideas.
[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: They were just exploiting everybody and being capitalists and imperialists and all this stuff.
[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: There was a populist...
[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: An attempt to make a democracy counter to the oligarchy.
[1:11:29] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:11:31] Bob Dobbs: what was I going to say about that?
[1:11:35] Cameron McEwen: I think your front page challenged.
[1:11:37] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:11:37] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:11:38] Bob Dobbs: So when he said,
[1:11:39] Bob Dobbs: businessmen are interested in ideas,
[1:11:41] Bob Dobbs: nobody,
[1:11:41] Bob Dobbs: that's nuts,
[1:11:42] Bob Dobbs: Marshall.
[1:11:43] Bob Dobbs: They're not interested in ideas.
[1:11:44] Bob Dobbs: They don't have an idea in their head.
[1:11:45] Bob Dobbs: They don't care about culture.
[1:11:47] Bob Dobbs: But I think McLuhan knew what he was talking about.
[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: He knew Culture Is Our Business,
[1:11:50] Bob Dobbs: and actually businessmen were.
[1:11:52] Bob Dobbs: exploiting the new software cultures,
[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: the new content,
[1:11:56] Bob Dobbs: the leisure society industries.
[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: And so they were interested in ideas.
[1:12:03] Bob Dobbs: So ideas are not what we're trying to get to.
[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: If you want to be Culture Is Our Business,
[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: you would not engage ideas as content.
[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: You'd engage in whatever Marshall was trying to say Finnegans Wake was showing us,
[1:12:20] Bob Dobbs: pattern recognition.
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: Not necessarily ideas.
[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: So you have people today have millions of ideas.
[1:12:26] Bob Dobbs: We have no shortage of ideas about everything.
[1:12:29] Bob Dobbs: Everybody is quite inspired,
[1:12:31] Bob Dobbs: drunk on ideas,
[1:12:32] Bob Dobbs: writing about it,
[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: making movies,
[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: blogs,
[1:12:35] Bob Dobbs: and all kinds of things.
[1:12:36] Bob Dobbs: And that is cliche awareness.
[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: Actually,
[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: we don't need a whole bunch of ideas.
[1:12:45] Bob Dobbs: If you get what McLuhan saying,
[1:12:46] Bob Dobbs: you got one idea,
[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: one notion,
[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: one form about
[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: or one question about what are the issues that you can apply as a formula to all kinds of activities,
[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: like McLuhan did.
[1:12:59] Bob Dobbs: So right when everybody got involved with the great democracy of idea and dialogue was when dialogue was obsolete,
[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: and there was a new kind of dialogue necessary.
[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan called it a complex clairvoyance.
[1:13:13] Bob Dobbs: Remember that phrase?
[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: Complex clairvoyance.
[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: We were all engaging in a collective consciousness.
[1:13:22] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: just as humans,
[1:13:26] Cameron McEwen: because that's what language is,
[1:13:30] Cameron McEwen: and there are no humans aside from language.
[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: and language had become nonverbal,
[1:13:39] Bob Dobbs: Postman,
[1:13:40] Bob Dobbs: parallel verbal,
[1:13:42] Bob Dobbs: gestural.
[1:13:43] Bob Dobbs: It became environmental,
[1:13:44] Bob Dobbs: where everybody was in the resonant node and could see what was going on.
[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: The question was then,
[1:13:50] Bob Dobbs: which culture,
[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: which tradition?
[1:13:52] Bob Dobbs: would dominate the historical traditions they could claim that made them more important than the other guy's tradition.
[1:14:02] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan,
[1:14:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:14:03] Bob Dobbs: he cited
[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: Menippean satirist as his tradition.
[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: going back to,
[1:14:08] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:14:09] Bob Dobbs: Rabelais,
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: Laurence
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: Sterne,
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: Pope,
[1:14:15] Bob Dobbs: Swift, maybe someone else I'm forgetting in the 19th century.
[1:14:21] Bob Dobbs: And then he gets into...
[1:14:21] Bob Dobbs: to
[1:14:23] Bob Dobbs: Pound and Joyce,
[1:14:25] Bob Dobbs: he just has a whole sequence of writers that are Menippean satirists that he cited as his tradition.
[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: And he always talked about them.
[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: I guess Mallarmé,
[1:14:36] Bob Dobbs: Flaubert,
[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: Baudelaire.
[1:14:39] Bob Dobbs: So that was McLuhan tradition.
[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: Other people would celebrate Karl Marx or
[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: Freddie Engels or some anarchist,
[1:14:49] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn or something.
[1:14:52] Bob Dobbs: There was the battle of the traditions.
[1:14:54] Bob Dobbs: And so a lot of public intellectuals,
[1:14:57] Bob Dobbs: Thompson had his own mystical,
[1:14:59] Bob Dobbs: theosophical tradition,
[1:15:00] Bob Dobbs: he would quote.
[1:15:03] Bob Dobbs: Thompson was interesting because he did include Finnegans Wake in his.
[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: Not many other people,
[1:15:08] Bob Dobbs: Marxists,
[1:15:08] Bob Dobbs: don't include Finnegans Wake.
[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: Then there's art historian traditions.
[1:15:14] Bob Dobbs: So we have a battle.
[1:15:17] Cameron McEwen: In all of this stuff,
[1:15:18] Cameron McEwen: people don't really know what's going on.
[1:15:22] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:15:22] Cameron McEwen: What they're doing is they're expressing a point of view.
[1:15:28] Cameron McEwen: So what they're doing is they're coming from the Gutenberg Galaxy and attempting to understand the cosmic reality.
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: But you can't do that.
[1:15:43] Cameron McEwen: That's exercising what McLuhan called light on.
[1:15:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:15:48] Cameron McEwen: But instead...
[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: The only way to make sense of the galaxy is to come from the cosmos to it,
[1:15:59] Cameron McEwen: which is what he called light through.
[1:16:02] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: So this,
[1:16:05] Bob Dobbs: what I call these anti-environment or these traditions,
[1:16:08] Bob Dobbs: mythic stages,
[1:16:10] Bob Dobbs: and the culture war is,
[1:16:12] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:16:13] Bob Dobbs: Harold Bloom comes along and says,
[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: there's the Western canon,
[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: nothing's more valuable than that.
[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: And all you feminists out there trying to make a new canon with stuff that's mediocre,
[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: go back to the old canon.
[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: So that was Bloom's mythic stage,
[1:16:27] Bob Dobbs: those people.
[1:16:28] Bob Dobbs: And you could make a case for whatever the feminists were coming out with since.
[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: Women were suppressed and ignored or had difficulty maintaining their own freedom.
[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: They had to have pen names and all this stuff,
[1:16:43] Bob Dobbs: disguises.
[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: So that's another tradition.
[1:16:46] Bob Dobbs: So you get the battle of knowledge,
[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: and all these things are
[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: Gutenbergian stream of consciousness,
[1:16:53] Bob Dobbs: of tradition.
[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: Battle of the mythic stages.
[1:16:57] Bob Dobbs: And that is what makes wealth and makes cultural debate.
[1:17:01] Bob Dobbs: but it's not the debate that's really important.
[1:17:04] Bob Dobbs: You've got to drop all that stuff.
[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: And then that's why you would talk to pretty well anybody,
[1:17:11] Bob Dobbs: because we're dealing with a phenomenon where the global classroom is educating everybody in all bizarre ways because they come at it from different histories.
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: So it's always interesting to talk to anybody today.
[1:17:25] Bob Dobbs: You could say that the average citizen is way more interesting than they were 100 or 200 years ago.
[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: because of what they have to process every day and the autonomy they have in doing that.
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: And they're processing stuff that you don't even know about.
[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: Their experience,
[1:17:42] Bob Dobbs: and there's a whole range of different kinds of experiences and traditions that people can study.
[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: So you now have that on the blogs.
[1:17:51] Bob Dobbs: There's many,
[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: many forums where people are talking about cultural ancestors that they value.
[1:18:05] Cameron McEwen: What you're saying is that there's been intellectual progress.
[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:18:10] Cameron McEwen: People are more...
[1:18:11] Cameron McEwen: Not progress,
[1:18:12] Cameron McEwen: but...
[1:18:13] Cameron McEwen: I believe exactly the opposite.
[1:18:15] Cameron McEwen: There's been intellectual dumbing down.
[1:18:18] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:18:19] Cameron McEwen: but wait a minute.
[1:18:20] Bob Dobbs: The dumbing down is because they don't understand that what they are experiencing and making themselves unique is not the issue.
[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: So everybody has their expertise and what they find interesting,
[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: and they read books and go to movies and study,
[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: find strange things to study,
[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: and then they might find somebody they can talk about.
[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: But you have to sit back and look at the range of content,
[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: cultural content,
[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: that people have access to and discuss,
[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know what's going on.
[1:18:53] Bob Dobbs: It's like right when the simplest answers are available,
[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: due to the collective clairvoyance that
[1:19:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan talking about,
[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: that's when everybody gets distracted by millions of data bytes of cultural content.
[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: So right when we don't need content,
[1:19:12] Bob Dobbs: there's a lot of it,
[1:19:13] Bob Dobbs: because it's obsolete.
[1:19:14] Bob Dobbs: And everybody is picking their tradition to vote for in that.
[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: And yet,
[1:19:21] Bob Dobbs: if I took over the United Nations and forced everybody to listen to me,
[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: I could lay out what the...
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: Esperanto is,
[1:19:28] Bob Dobbs: the collective Esperanto,
[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: and make everybody see it.
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't need to know about this,
[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: that,
[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: or the other thing.
[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: It's what Bob's talking about.
[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: We're all in that boat.
[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: so I put that on in C.
[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: Kellan in the 80s.
[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: That was a strategy to point out that everybody was awake enough,
[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: and that we had to change our idea of what motivated somnambulism is.
[1:19:53] Bob Dobbs: So when you start complaining that people are getting dumber,
[1:19:56] Bob Dobbs: That's not the right language for what's happening to people.
[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: They're not getting dumber.
[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: They're getting smarter on the content level.
[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: And Bernard said,
[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:20:06] Bob Dobbs: Bernard said this.
[1:20:06] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:20:07] Bob Dobbs: the problem today is people know too much.
[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: See,
[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: but they know all kinds of Gutenbergian bits and fragments in music,
[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: art,
[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: poetry,
[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: literature,
[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: sculpture,
[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: opera,
[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: hockey,
[1:20:21] Bob Dobbs: baseball,
[1:20:22] Bob Dobbs: millions of data.
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: It's incredible.
[1:20:25] Bob Dobbs: the content in everybody's brain,
[1:20:27] Bob Dobbs: how much it has.
[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: But that's not the air sets anti-environment that we require.
[1:20:42] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:20:43] Bob Dobbs: Finally,
[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: I get it corrected.
[1:20:45] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,
[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: hey,
[1:20:47] Bob Dobbs: correct.
[1:20:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:20:50] Bob Dobbs: what am I correct about?
[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: Let's find out what you think you mean.
[1:20:54] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:20:54] Cameron McEwen: when you talk about the content amounting to nothing and people not knowing Wimsatt...
[1:21:01] Cameron McEwen: because the content gets in their way and the notion of content getting in people's way as being Gutenbergian,
[1:21:13] Cameron McEwen: all of that is true.
[1:21:15] Cameron McEwen: I would simply say that for me personally,
[1:21:20] Cameron McEwen: if people don't come to realize that their supposed insights
[1:21:30] Cameron McEwen: amount literally to nothing,
[1:21:34] Cameron McEwen: that they dissolve into thin air,
[1:21:37] Cameron McEwen: that they cannot get to the real stuff,
[1:21:43] Cameron McEwen: what you were earlier calling the art forms,
[1:21:46] Cameron McEwen: the perceptions.
[1:21:47] Cameron McEwen: They cannot understand what's really going in their environment until they let go of the stuff.
[1:21:58] Cameron McEwen: that they think is important.
[1:22:00] Bob Dobbs: And they're proud that they know.
[1:22:03] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:22:04] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:22:05] Cameron McEwen: That's the most difficult thing.
[1:22:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:22:07] Cameron McEwen: There's a correlation between identity and world.
[1:22:12] Cameron McEwen: And so if people are going to give up a false notion of the world,
[1:22:17] Cameron McEwen: they have to give up a false notion of their own identity.
[1:22:21] Cameron McEwen: And people find that very hard to do.
[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: So I look at a lot of different Facebook forums.
[1:22:27] Bob Dobbs: They're all over the place.
[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: It's remarkable how people talk among themselves about how stupid everybody else is.
[1:22:34] Bob Dobbs: Most of them are quite despairing.
[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: They say,
[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: we're not going to,
[1:22:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:22:37] Bob Dobbs: there's just too many ignorant people out there.
[1:22:39] Bob Dobbs: And they have no clue of the ignorance of what their sophistication really is.
[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: They really,
[1:22:46] Bob Dobbs: I watch the intelligence.
[1:22:48] Bob Dobbs: They quote learned stuff all over the place,
[1:22:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:22:51] Bob Dobbs: whatever they're reading.
[1:22:52] Bob Dobbs: And it's all,
[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan said,
[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: baby powder gets in their eyes.
[1:22:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: cosmic dust that gets in their eyes and you there's it's very it's impossible to get them to wake up from that they have so many uh cultural biases uh you know they think when they go to the ontario art college or the museum they're doing something we're all interior let's go get some culture you know or they watch some some interesting tv shows uh
[1:23:20] Bob Dobbs: what they value is what they don't want to question yeah okay i completely agree with that
[1:23:27] Cameron McEwen: But how you think that that sort of overwhelming reality amounts to people getting smarter,
[1:23:39] Cameron McEwen: I don't agree with that.
[1:23:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:23:40] Cameron McEwen: that's the invisible part.
[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: Maybe they're using smarter in quotes or something.
[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: they don't.
[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: They don't know how they become smarter.
[1:23:48] Bob Dobbs: They're thinking smart is the kind of stuff they talk about,
[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: their content.
[1:23:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:23:53] Cameron McEwen: so in other words,
[1:23:55] Cameron McEwen: if we want to talk about really getting smart,
[1:23:59] Cameron McEwen: then that's not what's going on out there.
[1:24:02] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:24:03] Cameron McEwen: What's going on out there is getting dumber,
[1:24:06] Cameron McEwen: and the only way out of that cul-de-sac is to go deeper into the dumb,
[1:24:12] Cameron McEwen: to explore our ignorance.
[1:24:15] Cameron McEwen: And what that amounts to on a personal level is giving up.
[1:24:22] Cameron McEwen: the sense of identity and the sense of driving the car of identity that was structuring that world.
[1:24:32] Cameron McEwen: Humans have the ability to fall out of false identities,
[1:24:38] Cameron McEwen: and that's really the key to us ever getting to a mutual understanding.
[1:24:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:24:47] Bob Dobbs: and the...
[1:24:52] Bob Dobbs: I think a lot of people should hear our dialogue,
[1:24:54] Bob Dobbs: is what I think.
[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: Because we're saying things a bit different from what they're used to.
[1:25:02] Bob Dobbs: Nobody says what we say.
[1:25:04] Bob Dobbs: All that stuff you think makes you Marchand you're despairing because the majority of the population doesn't know anything about what you think is valuable.
[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: Not you,
[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: but anybody.
[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: And you don't want to question that.
[1:25:16] Bob Dobbs: There's the problem.
[1:25:19] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.
[1:25:21] Bob Dobbs: And they don't want to look at that.
[1:25:23] Bob Dobbs: But then you can find people who think that they,
[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: I agree with you,
[1:25:27] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[1:25:27] Bob Dobbs: But then,
[1:25:28] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: they've got a whole bunch of stuff they value.
[1:25:31] Bob Dobbs: If they had a chance,
[1:25:32] Bob Dobbs: they'd impose that on people.
[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't impose cultural content on people and impose something else.
[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: And that remains secret for now,
[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: what I'm going to impose on people.
[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: So.
[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: Let's look at my words here to see if what we're talking about is what I'm trying to point out here.
[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: I have here...
[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: 104,
[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: 103,
[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: that's about the archetype and whether Jung is important or not.
[1:26:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:26:12] Cameron McEwen: don't skip over the
[1:26:14] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme part here.
[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: Where's that?
[1:26:17] Cameron McEwen: I think that's in the middle of 103.
[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: because that's what I'm coming to.
[1:26:21] Cameron McEwen: The hidden ground is the Android Meme.
[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: because I have here.
[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is here talking about the analog media phase culminating in the global theater.
[1:26:30] Bob Dobbs: So the content of the global theater is the analog media,
[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: and that's Gutenberg and Marconi media.
[1:26:38] Bob Dobbs: Marconi,
[1:26:38] Bob Dobbs: now the first half of the 20th century and the 19th and 18th centuries would be the content of the global theater or of analog media,
[1:26:46] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:26:47] Bob Dobbs: Analog media phase.
[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: So then the hidden ground of that is the Android Meme.
[1:26:52] Bob Dobbs: The digital is being built at MIT and other high-tech centers,
[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: and they started hooking up the computers in September 69 at UCLA.
[1:26:59] Bob Dobbs: That began the Internet.
[1:27:01] Bob Dobbs: This quotation below is from November 69.
[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: So here's what McLuhan said.
[1:27:08] Bob Dobbs: The 70s will see.
[1:27:10] Bob Dobbs: The end of solutions.
[1:27:14] Bob Dobbs: Pattern recognition via inspection of multiple problems will bring an end to the hidden anti-environment.
[1:27:19] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:27:19] Bob Dobbs: he's saying that we will become.
[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: aware,
[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: like McLuhan,
[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: pretty close to McLuhan,
[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: we will see the hidden anti-environment,
[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: but we won't know why we see the hidden anti-environment.
[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: So he's saying the end of solution means the beginning of questions,
[1:27:35] Bob Dobbs: the importance of questions,
[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: which is what he announces in his debate with Miller in The Listener in that period,
[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: 70,
[1:27:42] Bob Dobbs: 71.
[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: You guys get all these answers.
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[1:27:45] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:27:46] Cameron McEwen: I just want to point out that this is
[1:27:49] Cameron McEwen: A wonderful quotation that you have here from 1969.
[1:27:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:27:56] Cameron McEwen: But the interesting thing about it is that it's still in our future today.
[1:28:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:28:03] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:28:03] Cameron McEwen: So this is over 50 years ago.
[1:28:07] Cameron McEwen: And what he's saying is coming in a couple of years.
[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: He calls it the 70s.
[1:28:13] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:28:14] Cameron McEwen: in...
[1:28:15] Cameron McEwen: 2022,
[1:28:17] Bob Dobbs: we're nowhere near that.
[1:28:21] Bob Dobbs: It's a very good issue of the Dewline,
[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: volume two,
[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: number three.
[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: It's a poster.
[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: Have you ever seen it?
[1:28:28] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[1:28:29] Cameron McEwen: I've got the content in my file somewhere,
[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: but I don't know that I've actually seen the poster.
[1:28:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: so it has a lot of great statements on it.
[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: It's a whole new McLuhan.
[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: that the only person I discussed it with was Andrew Sarris.
[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: He saw it.
[1:28:50] Bob Dobbs: Maybe he got one when he was in Ottawa.
[1:28:52] Bob Dobbs: So we went through it all.
[1:28:53] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:28:54] Bob Dobbs: now there's the new McLuhan of the 70s that no one even was aware of,
[1:28:58] Bob Dobbs: and this was a good sample statement.
[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: The end of solutions.
[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: So what replaces that?
[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: it becomes questions,
[1:29:05] Bob Dobbs: which are the solutions.
[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: Pattern recognition by inspection of multiple problems will bring an end to the hidden anti-environment.
[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: See,
[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: that's a way of saying...
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: we will become collectively conscious.
[1:29:16] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:29:17] Cameron McEwen: I completely agree with that.
[1:29:19] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[1:29:20] Cameron McEwen: My way of talking about that is to say that we need to enter into the scientific investigation of the new field of the interior landscape.
[1:29:34] Cameron McEwen: Is the interior landscape only interior?
[1:29:37] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:29:37] Cameron McEwen: of course not.
[1:29:38] Cameron McEwen: The interior landscape is the interior landscape.
[1:29:43] Cameron McEwen: correlated with the subjects that see it,
[1:29:48] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:29:49] Cameron McEwen: So the end of solutions is the end of people existing in environments that they don't understand.
[1:29:57] Cameron McEwen: And how does that come about?
[1:29:59] Cameron McEwen: It comes about through pattern recognition.
[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: So let's see if what I say or the next quote gets to what you just said.
[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: So I go,
[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: that's a very big statement,
[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: the end of solutions.
[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: They all thought McLuhan still believed he had solutions,
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: but he was telling them,
[1:30:15] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:30:16] Bob Dobbs: I'll tell you what you don't know.
[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: We aren't going to have solutions.
[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: And then I say,
[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is saying everybody would start to see the hidden anti-environment due to speed up.
[1:30:26] Bob Dobbs: It wouldn't be the province of the artist or the McLuhan.
[1:30:29] Bob Dobbs: Everybody would be forced to see what was happening.
[1:30:31] Bob Dobbs: And that's what happened over the next 30 years.
[1:30:34] Bob Dobbs: So that's 70 to 2000.
[1:30:36] Bob Dobbs: People started to notice,
[1:30:37] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:30:37] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: this technology is doing something to us.
[1:30:39] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:30:40] Bob Dobbs: the medium is massaging me.
[1:30:42] Bob Dobbs: Whether they knew about McLuhan or what he said or not,
[1:30:45] Bob Dobbs: this was a sentence on a big poster he had made.
[1:30:48] Bob Dobbs: I was talking about this with Andrew Sarris back in 2004,
[1:30:50] Bob Dobbs: and I said,
[1:30:50] Bob Dobbs: look,
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: see,
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: he has a whole new statement at the beginning of 1970.
[1:30:54] Bob Dobbs: We called it,
[1:30:55] Bob Dobbs: me and
[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: Andrew called it the later McLuhan.
[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: And he used that phrase in his PhD.
[1:31:01] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:31:02] Bob Dobbs: I say that.
[1:31:03] Bob Dobbs: If I didn't know I said all this,
[1:31:05] Bob Dobbs: what I was telling you two minutes ago,
[1:31:07] Bob Dobbs: that it was coming up.
[1:31:08] Bob Dobbs: And he used that pattern in his PhD.
[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: So then I go,
[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: however,
[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: In this phase of the global theater metaphor,
[1:31:14] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan got the more relevant insights first.
[1:31:17] Bob Dobbs: Neil Postman,
[1:31:18] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,
[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: were amusing herself to death,
[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: 1985,
[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: did not see what McLuhan saw in 1968.
[1:31:25] Bob Dobbs: So I then say,
[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: these are very important quotations.
[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: This is the matrix.
[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: Then we come to the next quote from Warren Peace in 1968.
[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: The important thing is to realize that electric information systems are living environments in the full organic sense.
[1:31:40] Bob Dobbs: So now we're getting into the Android Meme.
[1:31:42] Bob Dobbs: And we have talked about that quote before.
[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: And then I go,
[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: something came alive.
[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: And that's when everybody's looking at 2001,
[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: A Space Odyssey,
[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: a movie about computers coming alive.
[1:31:52] Bob Dobbs: And then we have another statement of aliveness.
[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says in
[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: Playboy, our whole cultural habitat,
[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: which we once viewed as a mere container of people,
[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: is being transformed by these media and by space satellites into a living organism,
[1:32:07] Bob Dobbs: itself contained within a new macrocosm or connubium of a superterrestrial nature.
[1:32:12] Bob Dobbs: And then you have been writing about connubium in your most recent stuff,
[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: trying to figure out what this means or to state it.
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: So I go,
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: that's another very big statement.
[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: And he was expressing ideas like these in the interview as if he had talked it.
[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: People couldn't believe it when they read the Playboy magazine interview.
[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: They said,
[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: what human talks like this?
[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: He was talking like a,
[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was talking like a book,
[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: but actually he wasn't talking,
[1:32:35] Bob Dobbs: he was writing it.
[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: But he could talk it if someone was around to understand him.
[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: But these are perfect statements.
[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: Remember I told you that
[1:32:43] Bob Dobbs: Eric Norden couldn't understand him,
[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: what he was saying.
[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: So he told him to write out the answers.
[1:32:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: So then we get into what we talked about before,
[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: the mammalian,
[1:32:53] Bob Dobbs: the different kinds of aliveness.
[1:32:56] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan says on the bottom of the quote,
[1:33:00] Bob Dobbs: it is the cultural habitat in which we have long been accustomed to think that people were contained that has now become the mammal itself,
[1:33:07] Bob Dobbs: now containing a new macrocosm or connubium of a superterrestrial kind.
[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: Our technologies or Explorations and the anti-environment or habitats which they create must now become the matrix of that macrocosmic connubial bliss derived by the evolutionists.
[1:33:20] Bob Dobbs: Now we've talked much about this and I'm whipping through them because we're trying to get to the Android Meme.
[1:33:26] Bob Dobbs: which is coming up after the global theater.
[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,
[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: I say our whole cultural habitat,
[1:33:33] Bob Dobbs: which we once viewed as a mere container of people,
[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: that's the same idea of what he just said.
[1:33:37] Bob Dobbs: The world you think you live in,
[1:33:39] Bob Dobbs: walking around in your chemical body,
[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: that's what you think is the world.
[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: You don't notice you've been discarnate and all over the world on your telephone.
[1:33:50] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:33:50] Bob Dobbs: before we go into the next part,
[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: I made a big discovery the other day.
[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: Going through
[1:33:59] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake with Ion on the show,
[1:34:02] Bob Dobbs: we were doing the center of the book,
[1:34:03] Bob Dobbs: page 293,
[1:34:04] Bob Dobbs: where the diagram is,
[1:34:06] Bob Dobbs: the geometric figure.
[1:34:08] Bob Dobbs: You know that part of Finnegans Wake?
[1:34:14] Bob Dobbs: Have you got Finnegans Wake there?
[1:34:16] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to remember it,
[1:34:17] Cameron McEwen: but I can't at the moment.
[1:34:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:34:20] Bob Dobbs: there's a design called the Vesica Pisces.
[1:34:24] Bob Dobbs: there on page 293.
[1:34:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:34:27] Bob Dobbs: we started going into analyzing 293,
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: and we started on the middle of 292.
[1:34:32] Bob Dobbs: And right there,
[1:34:34] Bob Dobbs: opposite the chart,
[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: in the middle of the book,
[1:34:36] Bob Dobbs: line 15 on page 292,
[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: was McLuhan using the word discarnate.
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: I knew he used the word discarnate.
[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: That was the closest that I thought was in Finnegans Wake.
[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: I never could find discarnate.
[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: I have
[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: a concordance with every word in Finney's Wake.
[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: And for some reason,
[1:34:58] Bob Dobbs: I missed the word discarnate.
[1:35:00] Bob Dobbs: All these years,
[1:35:02] Bob Dobbs: I knew discarnate,
[1:35:04] Bob Dobbs: but I never saw the word discarnate looking in the concordance.
[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: So here it is,
[1:35:10] Bob Dobbs: right there in the middle of the page at the center of the book.
[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: And I said,
[1:35:13] Bob Dobbs: so I posted a word that McLuhan used mostly more than any other word in his public talks.
[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: he might say the medium is the message or the global village,
[1:35:23] Bob Dobbs: but the word he was really talking about in the late and repeated a lot was discarnate.
[1:35:27] Bob Dobbs: And there it is right in the center of Finnegans Wake.
[1:35:32] Bob Dobbs: And there's other stuff around it.
[1:35:34] Bob Dobbs: So I remembered the other stuff around it,
[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: like lines
[1:35:40] Bob Dobbs: 10 to 25 and discarnate is in line 15.
[1:35:45] Bob Dobbs: So I said,
[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: where is that?
[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: That's in War and Peace.
[1:35:47] Bob Dobbs: So I scanned through War and Peace,
[1:35:48] Bob Dobbs: and there it was on page 14 and 15.
[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: It's a picture of an ape,
[1:35:52] Bob Dobbs: and he has this quote of that section,
[1:35:55] Bob Dobbs: the middle of page 292,
[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: but he leaves out the word discarnate.
[1:36:00] Bob Dobbs: That's not there.
[1:36:02] Bob Dobbs: It would have really stood out if it was there.
[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: And so I find out this late date that he actually was using a word that was coming from the center of Finnegans Wake,
[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: linearly speaking,
[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: the center.
[1:36:15] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: I then went and checked my concordance.
[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: Wow,
[1:36:20] Bob Dobbs: there it is,
[1:36:20] Bob Dobbs: discarnate.
[1:36:21] Bob Dobbs: It's only used once.
[1:36:22] Bob Dobbs: I missed that all these years.
[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: And I think everybody else missed it.
[1:36:26] Bob Dobbs: Nobody noticed.
[1:36:27] Bob Dobbs: that the word that McLuhan said most was coming from the central diagram and the words around it.
[1:36:36] Bob Dobbs: And right above it is a talk about Wyndham Lewis and Time and Western Man.
[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: Joyce has a joke,
[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: Spice and West End Woman,
[1:36:45] Bob Dobbs: he calls it.
[1:36:46] Bob Dobbs: And there's other interesting things in there,
[1:36:48] Bob Dobbs: but that's,
[1:36:52] Bob Dobbs: there's something you can write about,
[1:36:54] Bob Dobbs: the use of Discarnate from Finney's Wake.
[1:36:57] Bob Dobbs: And it is one of his most used words.
[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: Would you agree?
[1:37:01] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:37:02] Cameron McEwen: I was just going to ask you about that.
[1:37:07] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan certainly did use the word discarnate,
[1:37:13] Cameron McEwen: especially in his later works.
[1:37:17] Cameron McEwen: But was it his main word in the
[1:37:24] Cameron McEwen: 1970s?
[1:37:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:37:26] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[1:37:27] Cameron McEwen: I would tend more towards discontinuity.
[1:37:31] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:37:31] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:37:33] Bob Dobbs: that's the 60s.
[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: You go up to the
[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: Mike McManus interview in 77,
[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: 78 in there.
[1:37:40] Bob Dobbs: He's pointing out how we have no bodies,
[1:37:42] Bob Dobbs: and he says we are discarnate.
[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: for sure.
[1:37:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: he talks about that a whole lot.
[1:37:47] Cameron McEwen: I'm not denying that.
[1:37:48] Bob Dobbs: And I'm saying,
[1:37:50] Bob Dobbs: he talks about many other things,
[1:37:51] Bob Dobbs: but that's one of the words or ideas that he repeats a lot.
[1:37:55] Bob Dobbs: through many years.
[1:37:57] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying,
[1:37:57] Bob Dobbs: yep,
[1:37:58] Bob Dobbs: I'm voting it as the number one word that he's using.
[1:38:01] Bob Dobbs: And then I'm making great significance out of the fact it comes from the center of Finnegans Wake.
[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: There it is,
[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: Discarnate.
[1:38:07] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: has anybody ever told you that Discarnate in Finnegans Wake?
[1:38:10] Bob Dobbs: No.
[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: No one's ever noticed it in the McLuhan industry,
[1:38:16] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:38:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:38:18] Cameron McEwen: I don't know of any discussion about it.
[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: Nothing.
[1:38:22] Bob Dobbs: It's an important word.
[1:38:23] Bob Dobbs: And the placing of it in the book is incredible.
[1:38:26] Bob Dobbs: It's right beside the chart,
[1:38:28] Bob Dobbs: the diagram,
[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: same position on the page beside it.
[1:38:33] Bob Dobbs: So do you have a copy of Finnegans Wake?
[1:38:37] Cameron McEwen: Not here.
[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: Not there.
[1:38:39] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:38:40] Cameron McEwen: I have it in the house somewhere,
[1:38:41] Bob Dobbs: sure.
[1:38:42] Bob Dobbs: Somewhere.
[1:38:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:38:43] Bob Dobbs: so anyways,
[1:38:44] Bob Dobbs: I wanted to tell you my big breakthrough,
[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: so I polled you,
[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: and we'll go back.
[1:38:49] Bob Dobbs: I just read the word discarnate.
[1:38:52] Bob Dobbs: And somewhere's in here of what I was just reading,
[1:38:55] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:38:57] Bob Dobbs: I thought I saw that.
[1:38:58] Bob Dobbs: That's what reminded me.
[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,
[1:39:04] Bob Dobbs: I told you that the medieval anti-environment balanced.
[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: there it is.
[1:39:09] Bob Dobbs: You don't notice you've been discarnate and all over the world on your telephone.
[1:39:13] Bob Dobbs: I told you that the medieval anti-environment balanced.
[1:39:15] Bob Dobbs: You have a little bit of visual space,
[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: the phonetic alphabet,
[1:39:18] Bob Dobbs: and manuscripts,
[1:39:18] Bob Dobbs: which are balanced off by the oral tactile culture.
[1:39:21] Bob Dobbs: There was balance in different phases.
[1:39:23] Bob Dobbs: The balance here is once you see there are satellite environments bouncing off first nature or first nature is bouncing off second nature,
[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: then you can see there's a connubial bliss at the hidden ground.
[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had a vision.
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: He saw the new order and nobody else could see it.
[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: They ran around panicking or schizoid or hysterical or ecstatic or paranoid because they couldn't see the order beneath everything.
[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: He could.
[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: He called it a connubium of a superterrestrial kind.
[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: It involves a satellite environment.
[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: which is off the planet,
[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: and it's a matrix.
[1:39:52] Bob Dobbs: He was the first to use the matrix idea.
[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: Then you go to a quote from Understanding Media.
[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: Such a program involves the endowing of each plastic form with a kind of nervous system of its own.
[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: There's a strange statement that no one talks about.
[1:40:08] Bob Dobbs: Such a program involves the endowing of each plastic form with a kind of nervous system of its own.
[1:40:15] Bob Dobbs: Then I translate that.
[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying objects are coming alive,
[1:40:18] Bob Dobbs: plastic form.
[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: If you say the nervous system is some kind of life,
[1:40:21] Bob Dobbs: it's being invested.
[1:40:22] Bob Dobbs: It's another way of saying what McLuhan said in the first two quotations above.
[1:40:27] Bob Dobbs: Then you have this really great quote from 1970.
[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: At electric speeds,
[1:40:31] Bob Dobbs: the hieroglyphs of the page of nature become readily intelligible,
[1:40:36] Bob Dobbs: and the book of the world becomes a kind of orphic hymn of revelation.
[1:40:40] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of that one?
[1:40:41] Bob Dobbs: That's one of his best sentences.
[1:40:43] Bob Dobbs: Uh-huh.
[1:40:44] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:40:45] Cameron McEwen: I like that.
[1:40:45] Cameron McEwen: I like that.
[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah?
[1:40:47] Cameron McEwen: I think it's impressive.
[1:40:48] Cameron McEwen: important to see that
[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan from very early on had the idea that the great problem of the modern world was that its constructions
[1:41:03] Cameron McEwen: personal and social constructions were obscuring its ability to receive information.
[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: We can put a hyphen in that,
[1:41:16] Cameron McEwen: in formation.
[1:41:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:41:19] Cameron McEwen: And so the need is to not be held by the galaxy,
[1:41:29] Cameron McEwen: which is our locality,
[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:41:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:41:32] Cameron McEwen: The Gutenberg Galaxy is this enormous piece of the cosmos to which we belong,
[1:41:42] Cameron McEwen: but the Gutenberg Galaxy is also a way of being a human being.
[1:41:49] Cameron McEwen: And for McLuhan,
[1:41:50] Cameron McEwen: the Gutenberg Galaxy,
[1:41:52] Cameron McEwen: in both senses,
[1:41:53] Cameron McEwen: gets in the way of cosmic information,
[1:41:58] Cameron McEwen: and the cosmic information is the
[1:42:00] Cameron McEwen: Connubium.
[1:42:02] Bob Dobbs: Would that be an Orphic Hymn of Revelation?
[1:42:05] Cameron McEwen: Sure,
[1:42:05] Cameron McEwen: you can call it that.
[1:42:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:42:08] Bob Dobbs: The hieroglyphs of the page of nature become readily intelligible.
[1:42:14] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:42:15] Bob Dobbs: So that's the old medium.
[1:42:17] Cameron McEwen: When McLuhan says something is easy or something is readily intelligible,
[1:42:26] Cameron McEwen: what he should put in brackets is that it...
[1:42:29] Cameron McEwen: It's easy,
[1:42:30] Cameron McEwen: but it's the hardest thing of all.
[1:42:32] Cameron McEwen: It's readily intelligible.
[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: Nobody knows what's up,
[1:42:40] Cameron McEwen: including McLuhan.
[1:42:41] Cameron McEwen: So that's how readily intelligible it was.
[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: and since you don't get it,
[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: you start whistling in the dark,
[1:42:51] Bob Dobbs: and that's an Orphic Hymn of Revelation.
[1:42:54] Bob Dobbs: The Book of the World becomes a kind of Orphic Hymn of Revelation.
[1:42:58] Bob Dobbs: Whistling in the dark.
[1:43:00] Bob Dobbs: Tune up the acoustic.
[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: So what would be,
[1:43:04] Bob Dobbs: you got the page of nature.
[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: That's not scripture.
[1:43:09] Bob Dobbs: That's science.
[1:43:10] Bob Dobbs: The book of the world,
[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: that might sound like secular knowledge,
[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: but could that refer to scripture,
[1:43:17] Bob Dobbs: book of the world?
[1:43:17] Cameron McEwen: Definitely.
[1:43:19] Cameron McEwen: That's what the Nash thesis is mostly about.
[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:43:23] Cameron McEwen: The idea of the book.
[1:43:28] Cameron McEwen: being,
[1:43:29] Cameron McEwen: first of all,
[1:43:30] Cameron McEwen: the book of the world,
[1:43:31] Cameron McEwen: and how that book of the world is intelligible.
[1:43:37] Cameron McEwen: And so the trivium is three different ways of reading that book.
[1:43:45] Cameron McEwen: So this is a very old theme in McLuhan work.
[1:43:48] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: and the Orphic is Gnostic.
[1:43:52] Bob Dobbs: He's talking about why a bias towards Gnostic ideologies.
[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: take over because it's a fill-in from the electric uh...
[1:44:03] Bob Dobbs: connubium three-event or fake him of revelation much of the population is getting insights and you know business business come along and market them through magazines are now
[1:44:20] Bob Dobbs: it's a different blog sites the revelation is the uh...
[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes?
[1:44:28] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:44:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: I couldn't hear anything for
[1:44:32] Cameron McEwen: 20 seconds or something.
[1:44:34] Cameron McEwen: I thought we'd lost our connection.
[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: so I'll repeat what I said.
[1:44:40] Bob Dobbs: The
[1:44:40] Bob Dobbs: Orphic is Gnostic.
[1:44:44] Bob Dobbs: Gnostic is a religion,
[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: ideology,
[1:44:46] Bob Dobbs: way back there 2,000 years ago.
[1:44:48] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:44:50] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: if you want to cite...
[1:44:54] Bob Dobbs: the Catholics'
[1:44:54] Bob Dobbs: argument with the Gnostics,
[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: then you say,
[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:44:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is not too impressed with the hymn of Revelation,
[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: because it's an Orphic hymn of Revelation.
[1:45:04] Bob Dobbs: But aside from whether he valued it or not,
[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: there was the fact that people were stoned on insights.
[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: And more and more as the media developed into the digital area,
[1:45:17] Bob Dobbs: the population is addicted to insights or revelation.
[1:45:23] Bob Dobbs: There's all kinds of bit pieces of Revelation going on,
[1:45:26] Bob Dobbs: little snippets of pattern recognition,
[1:45:28] Bob Dobbs: which,
[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: he said in 1974,
[1:45:30] Bob Dobbs: we're now addicted to pattern recognition,
[1:45:34] Bob Dobbs: the cognitive thrills.
[1:45:38] Bob Dobbs: He's not celebrating something when he says an Orphic hymn of Revelation,
[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: he's calling the symptoms of disease.
[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: So then the Book of the world becomes that.
[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: So that would be the body of the Christ.
[1:45:51] Bob Dobbs: becoming an ethereal antichrist.
[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: The Book of the World becomes a kind of Orphic hymn of revelation.
[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: If you're a Catholic and you don't like the Orphic idea.
[1:46:02] Cameron McEwen: You know?
[1:46:05] Cameron McEwen: We should just pay some attention,
[1:46:09] Cameron McEwen: some close attention to the phrase,
[1:46:11] Cameron McEwen: the Orphic Hymn of Revelation.
[1:46:13] Cameron McEwen: We need to ask,
[1:46:14] Cameron McEwen: is that of,
[1:46:16] Cameron McEwen: is that an objective genitive or a subjective genitive?
[1:46:20] Cameron McEwen: Or is it both together?
[1:46:21] Cameron McEwen: So an objective genitive,
[1:46:25] Cameron McEwen: Orphic Hymn of what?
[1:46:27] Cameron McEwen: An Orphic Hymn of
[1:46:29] Cameron McEwen: Revelation.
[1:46:30] Cameron McEwen: So as an objective genitive,
[1:46:33] Cameron McEwen: that says that the Phatic construct
[1:46:38] Cameron McEwen: Revelation in their hymn.
[1:46:42] Cameron McEwen: And,
[1:46:42] Cameron McEwen: of course,
[1:46:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would reject that.
[1:46:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:46:47] Cameron McEwen: But only on that first level.
[1:46:49] Cameron McEwen: If we then go on to say,
[1:46:51] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:46:51] Cameron McEwen: what is Orphic hymn of Revelation as a subjective genitive,
[1:46:56] Cameron McEwen: then that's where the hymn belongs to.
[1:47:00] Cameron McEwen: the revelation.
[1:47:02] Cameron McEwen: So then if we say,
[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: if the hymn belongs to the revelation,
[1:47:07] Cameron McEwen: then although the first sense of the hymn constructing revelation is short-sighted and wrong,
[1:47:18] Cameron McEwen: if the hymn belongs,
[1:47:20] Cameron McEwen: first of all,
[1:47:20] Cameron McEwen: to the revelation,
[1:47:22] Cameron McEwen: then even in its being wrong,
[1:47:25] Cameron McEwen: even in its being a misguided construction
[1:47:28] Cameron McEwen: There's something there that is revealed.
[1:47:31] Cameron McEwen: There is something there that is revelation.
[1:47:37] Cameron McEwen: So the whole idea that you've been talking about of getting the sense of the world depends upon the idea that all things,
[1:47:51] Cameron McEwen: as
[1:47:51] Cameron McEwen: Joyce says in Ulysses,
[1:47:52] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[1:47:54] Cameron McEwen: all things manifest
[1:47:57] Cameron McEwen: intelligibility,
[1:47:59] Cameron McEwen: not just smart things,
[1:48:01] Cameron McEwen: not just bright things.
[1:48:03] Cameron McEwen: All things manifest intelligibility.
[1:48:07] Cameron McEwen: And so the Orphic Hymn of
[1:48:11] Cameron McEwen: Revelation, as long as the of is understood in different ways,
[1:48:16] Cameron McEwen: you get the complexity of what McLuhan was talking about.
[1:48:24] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:48:27] Bob Dobbs: What do I say next?
[1:48:31] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,
[1:48:31] Bob Dobbs: how do I explain that?
[1:48:33] Bob Dobbs: I say the page of nature is science,
[1:48:36] Bob Dobbs: and the book of the world is all knowledge,
[1:48:38] Bob Dobbs: all anti-environment.
[1:48:40] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:48:40] Bob Dobbs: we were just saying now,
[1:48:42] Bob Dobbs: the book of the world was scripture.
[1:48:44] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,
[1:48:45] Bob Dobbs: back then I'm saying it's pagan knowledge.
[1:48:49] Bob Dobbs: That's what McLuhan does.
[1:48:50] Bob Dobbs: He updates the book of the world.
[1:48:52] Bob Dobbs: He's not stuck on the page of scientific nature,
[1:48:54] Bob Dobbs: which is a subset of the printing press.
[1:48:56] Bob Dobbs: And the Book of the World becomes a kind of Orphic Hymn of Revelation.
[1:48:59] Bob Dobbs: Science becomes readily Castaneda,
[1:49:02] Bob Dobbs: and we see the faults in science.
[1:49:04] Bob Dobbs: It's intelligible.
[1:49:05] Bob Dobbs: It no longer hypnotizes us.
[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: But meanwhile,
[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: the multi-global theater Android Meme is an Orphic Hymn of Revelation that's stunning you.
[1:49:13] Bob Dobbs: That's where I got Orphic Baroque spirals from,
[1:49:15] Bob Dobbs: from my Tiny Note chart.
[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: Orphism was a mystical Gnostic religion back in the Hellenic Greek days,
[1:49:21] Bob Dobbs: before Jesus Christ.
[1:49:23] Bob Dobbs: The next statement below is very important.
[1:49:25] Bob Dobbs: This is the solution.
[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: Do we want to retrieve national governments,
[1:49:29] Bob Dobbs: national economies,
[1:49:29] Bob Dobbs: or do we want to move to a global international order?
[1:49:32] Bob Dobbs: No.
[1:49:33] Bob Dobbs: Where are we to go then?
[1:49:35] Bob Dobbs: So then McLuhan says on page 227 of Take Today in 1972,
[1:49:40] Bob Dobbs: the future of government lies in the area of psychic ecology and can no longer be considered on a merely national or international basis.
[1:49:49] Bob Dobbs: There's a statement that should be plastered everywhere.
[1:49:53] Bob Dobbs: The future of government lies in the area of psychic ecology.
[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: that can be an awareness of the Orpik Hymn of Revelation.
[1:50:00] Cameron McEwen: Definitely.
[1:50:03] Bob Dobbs: That's the psychic ecology.
[1:50:04] Bob Dobbs: It can only be centered on a merely national or international basis.
[1:50:07] Bob Dobbs: And you know,
[1:50:09] Bob Dobbs: that is the old battle scene,
[1:50:15] Cameron McEwen: the
[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: Make America Great Again versus the globalists,
[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: There it is.
[1:50:20] Cameron McEwen: Wow.
[1:50:23] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:50:23] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:50:24] Cameron McEwen: you're saying that what we're going to try to do is get beyond that either-or that you were just mentioning.
[1:50:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:50:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:50:34] Cameron McEwen: of course.
[1:50:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:50:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:50:36] Cameron McEwen: they're both entirely wrong.
[1:50:38] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:50:39] Cameron McEwen: But their fallacy has a revelation to it.
[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: It's an Orphic revelation.
[1:50:48] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: and uh
[1:50:52] Bob Dobbs: You see the average somnambulist does respond to it and gets all excited.
[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: Now they've...
[1:51:00] Bob Dobbs: supposedly divided up America over it,
[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: so intense about this Orphic Hymn of Revelation.
[1:51:06] Bob Dobbs: The revelations are happening on both sides.
[1:51:09] Bob Dobbs: People are,
[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: the young kids,
[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: the woke kids,
[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: I think their vision is,
[1:51:14] Bob Dobbs: Jesus,
[1:51:14] Bob Dobbs: what are we fighting about?
[1:51:15] Bob Dobbs: We're all on the same boat technologically,
[1:51:17] Bob Dobbs: so why don't we all just get together?
[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: Put Bernie Sanders in.
[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: Is that his name?
[1:51:23] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:51:23] Bob Dobbs: Bernie.
[1:51:23] Bob Dobbs: Bernie Sanders.
[1:51:24] Bob Dobbs: Put Bernie Sanders in.
[1:51:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:51:26] Bob Dobbs: we'll call it socialism,
[1:51:27] Bob Dobbs: but it'll just be all togetherness.
[1:51:32] Bob Dobbs: You can see that since the Baby Boomers,
[1:51:34] Bob Dobbs: each generation has been coming up with some ideology of togetherness.
[1:51:38] Bob Dobbs: Now it's woke.
[1:51:40] Bob Dobbs: It's include everybody and then make up all these subdivisions.
[1:51:45] Bob Dobbs: Include them too.
[1:51:46] Cameron McEwen: They don't.
[1:51:48] Cameron McEwen: They.
[1:51:49] Cameron McEwen: That idea of we're all in the boat together and we'll include everybody.
[1:51:54] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: everybody that agrees with us.
[1:51:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:51:57] Cameron McEwen: If you don't agree with us.
[1:51:59] Cameron McEwen: And especially if you're historical tradition or something.
[1:52:05] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:52:06] Cameron McEwen: that's not in the boat anymore.
[1:52:08] Cameron McEwen: We're going to get rid of that.
[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:52:10] Bob Dobbs: because the idea of including everybody has become a phatic angular perspective,
[1:52:17] Bob Dobbs: a specialist view.
[1:52:18] Cameron McEwen: Including everybody like me.
[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: Because we all think,
[1:52:22] Bob Dobbs: now you can see that everybody thinks they're all the same as everybody else because they're all discarnate.
[1:52:26] Bob Dobbs: You can't visualize it.
[1:52:28] Bob Dobbs: but everybody's in the same boat of the resonant node of discarnate.
[1:52:34] Bob Dobbs: And so let's coagulate around that.
[1:52:37] Bob Dobbs: And that might be what he's wrestling with in the Divine,
[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: the Digital Communion book.
[1:52:44] Bob Dobbs: He's kind of wrestling with this point that everybody's in the resonant node.
[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: Where can we get faith or spiritual sustenance from that condition?
[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: So the millennials said,
[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: it's here,
[1:53:06] Bob Dobbs: stop resisting it.
[1:53:10] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know that you could include resistance.
[1:53:14] Bob Dobbs: Resistance could have a big audience too,
[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: or a big,
[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it,
[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: delegation,
[1:53:22] Bob Dobbs: a constituency.
[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: Did you get that?
[1:53:30] Bob Dobbs: Resistance has a...
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:32] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure how you're using the word resistance,
[1:53:34] Cameron McEwen: but it's certainly...
[1:53:36] Bob Dobbs: Anti-environment.
[1:53:40] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:53:41] Cameron McEwen: I see.
[1:53:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:42] Cameron McEwen: of course.
[1:53:42] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:53:45] Cameron McEwen: if we're-all-in-the-same-boat is taken in the World Economic Forum sense,
[1:53:52] Cameron McEwen: then there's huge opposition to it,
[1:53:55] Cameron McEwen: and there should be.
[1:53:58] Cameron McEwen: We're-all-in-the-same-boat...
[1:53:59] Cameron McEwen: together in McLuhan sense goes to the cosmos,
[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: goes beyond the galaxy and there we're all in the same boat in the sense that we have lost the thread of our tie
[1:54:21] Cameron McEwen: to origins and to final ends and until we re-find that
[1:54:29] Cameron McEwen: sense,
[1:54:30] Cameron McEwen: then there's just going to be chaos and confusion,
[1:54:33] Cameron McEwen: which is where we are.
[1:54:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:54:35] Bob Dobbs: and that'll give us a rapid succession of innovations as Josette anti-environment,
[1:54:39] Bob Dobbs: or a rapid succession of solutions as Josette anti-environment.
[1:54:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:54:46] Bob Dobbs: So then I go,
[1:54:47] Bob Dobbs: and we come back to this,
[1:54:49] Bob Dobbs: the Jungian point.
[1:54:50] Bob Dobbs: People think their heads have been unconscious in them,
[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: in their skulls,
[1:54:55] Bob Dobbs: but anti-environment is the unconscious.
[1:54:57] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan talking about it in the previous quotation four years later,
[1:55:00] Bob Dobbs: 1973,
[1:55:01] Bob Dobbs: still trying to get people to understand him.
[1:55:03] Bob Dobbs: He's saying,
[1:55:03] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: The media are what you're not conscious of.
[1:55:06] Bob Dobbs: That's the avant-garde.
[1:55:08] Bob Dobbs: News is an anti-environment.
[1:55:11] Bob Dobbs: People would look at news to ignore the good news of ads.
[1:55:13] Bob Dobbs: They would get some dose of bad news that they're surviving.
[1:55:17] Bob Dobbs: The news was anti-environment and an anti-environment.
[1:55:20] Bob Dobbs: But all anti-environment by 69 were fake anti-environment.
[1:55:24] Bob Dobbs: Because nothing could be in anti-environment to the ongoing Niagara Falls or whatever the heck we were living in.
[1:55:32] Bob Dobbs: Wimsatt,
[1:55:32] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment,
[1:55:33] Bob Dobbs: this is the first time fake news is being said.
[1:55:36] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was on TV in 69,
[1:55:37] Bob Dobbs: the time he was putting this out,
[1:55:39] Bob Dobbs: saying all news is fake news.
[1:55:40] Bob Dobbs: And the journalists couldn't take it.
[1:55:43] Bob Dobbs: That was Warner Troyer.
[1:55:43] Bob Dobbs: What page are you on now?
[1:55:45] Bob Dobbs: 102.
[1:55:49] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:55:49] Cameron McEwen: you went back then.
[1:55:50] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm just scrolling down.
[1:55:55] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:55:56] Bob Dobbs: Warner
[1:55:57] Bob Dobbs: Troyer argued with McLuhan.
[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: All news is not fake news.
[1:56:02] Bob Dobbs: I have here the journalist started rudely arguing with McLuhan right there on the TV show.
[1:56:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is being stubborn.
[1:56:08] Bob Dobbs: He's saying,
[1:56:08] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:56:08] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:56:09] Bob Dobbs: The journalist responds,
[1:56:10] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:56:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm not.
[1:56:11] Bob Dobbs: It ended up like that.
[1:56:12] Bob Dobbs: The journalist says,
[1:56:13] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:56:13] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:56:14] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan retorts,
[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: And that's how the show ended.
[1:56:20] Bob Dobbs: It's probably McLuhan worst on the normal intellectual decorum.
[1:56:28] Bob Dobbs: That was his worst performance.
[1:56:30] Bob Dobbs: Just,
[1:56:31] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:56:31] Bob Dobbs: you're wrong.
[1:56:33] Bob Dobbs: He's been reduced to street level.
[1:56:37] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:56:38] Cameron McEwen: he was upset.
[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: The guy's obtuseness.
[1:56:43] Bob Dobbs: Instead of the guy acting as an interviewer,
[1:56:48] Bob Dobbs: he was acting as an umpire.
[1:56:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:56:53] Cameron McEwen: and McLuhan wasn't having it.
[1:56:55] Cameron McEwen: And so
[1:56:56] Cameron McEwen: Mr. Troyer died shortly after.
[1:57:00] Cameron McEwen: Warner Troyer,
[1:57:01] Cameron McEwen: T-R-O-Y-E-R,
[1:57:03] Cameron McEwen: if you want to look him up.
[1:57:05] Cameron McEwen: So then we go,
[1:57:07] Cameron McEwen: go ahead.
[1:57:08] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan died shortly thereafter.
[1:57:11] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:57:12] Cameron McEwen: this is
[1:57:13] Cameron McEwen: 69. He's not going to die for another.
[1:57:14] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:57:15] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was.
[1:57:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm sorry.
[1:57:16] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was 77.
[1:57:17] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:57:18] Cameron McEwen: it's 69.
[1:57:19] Bob Dobbs: I was wrong.
[1:57:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:57:20] Cameron McEwen: Let me see.
[1:57:21] Cameron McEwen: When did Troyer die?
[1:57:24] Cameron McEwen: Did he die before McLuhan?
[1:57:34] Bob Dobbs: If he did,
[1:57:35] Bob Dobbs: he died as a young man.
[1:57:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:57:38] Cameron McEwen: he died in 91,
[1:57:40] Cameron McEwen: so he did outlive McLuhan.
[1:57:42] Bob Dobbs: Uh-huh.
[1:57:43] Cameron McEwen: But maybe he was sick for 10 years.
[1:57:45] Cameron McEwen: Let's see.
[1:57:47] Cameron McEwen: Was he sick?
[1:57:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:57:50] Cameron McEwen: He contracted throat cancer,
[1:57:52] Cameron McEwen: and he died in Toronto at age 59.
[1:57:55] Cameron McEwen: He died younger than McLuhan.
[1:57:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:57:58] Bob Dobbs: And look at the symbolism of throat cancer for an interviewer.
[1:58:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:58:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:58:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:58:05] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:58:05] Cameron McEwen: um...
[1:58:10] Cameron McEwen: He was involved in a program called Eye to Eye.
[1:58:12] Cameron McEwen: That's not cool.
[1:58:18] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:58:18] Cameron McEwen: so that's Mr.
[1:58:20] Cameron McEwen: Troyer.
[1:58:21] Cameron McEwen: Died early,
[1:58:21] Cameron McEwen: 59.
[1:58:23] Cameron McEwen: So then we have this interesting quote,
[1:58:26] Cameron McEwen: Back to Young,
[1:58:27] Cameron McEwen: by Frank Zingrone in the Essential McLuhan,
[1:58:32] Cameron McEwen: a collection of McLuhan highlights that he and
[1:58:36] Cameron McEwen: Eric put out in 1995.
[1:58:39] Bob Dobbs: But aren't we going backwards here?
[1:58:40] Bob Dobbs: Didn't we,
[1:58:42] Bob Dobbs: I thought we were up around 109 or something like that,
[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: and all of a sudden we were back on
[1:58:48] Bob Dobbs: 102. How did that come about?
[1:58:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:58:50] Cameron McEwen: we were on 103.
[1:58:52] Cameron McEwen: That's where we were supposed to start,
[1:58:53] Cameron McEwen: and we start there,
[1:58:54] Cameron McEwen: but somehow we flipped back,
[1:58:56] Cameron McEwen: and
[1:58:56] Cameron McEwen: I didn't notice it.
[1:58:59] Cameron McEwen: I was intrigued by the quotes.
[1:59:02] Cameron McEwen: So anyways,
[1:59:03] Cameron McEwen: we went over these quotes.
[1:59:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:59:06] Bob Dobbs: I'm not making a protest.
[1:59:09] Bob Dobbs: here.
[1:59:09] Bob Dobbs: I was just interested in how the path led that way.
[1:59:14] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:59:14] Cameron McEwen: we got down to the living organisms,
[1:59:19] Cameron McEwen: the matrix,
[1:59:21] Cameron McEwen: space odyssey,
[1:59:22] Cameron McEwen: the connubium,
[1:59:24] Cameron McEwen: that's 105,
[1:59:27] Cameron McEwen: the biode.
[1:59:28] Bob Dobbs: We were almost at the end of the chapter.
[1:59:32] Bob Dobbs: We got into 106.
[1:59:37] Bob Dobbs: Such a program involves endowing of each plastic form with a kind of nervous system.
[1:59:43] Bob Dobbs: So we were up around 106,
[1:59:46] Bob Dobbs: 107,
[1:59:46] Bob Dobbs: near the end of the chapter,
[1:59:48] Bob Dobbs: and then all of a sudden we got back to 102.
[1:59:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:59:52] Cameron McEwen: how did I,
[1:59:53] Cameron McEwen: how did I,
[1:59:54] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:59:54] Cameron McEwen: something attracted me back there that I thought was relevant.
[1:59:59] Cameron McEwen: Let's see,
[1:59:59] Cameron McEwen: 102.
[2:00:11] Cameron McEwen: I can't even find where we did get to.
[2:00:15] Cameron McEwen: Anyways,
[2:00:16] Cameron McEwen: I get bounced back.
[2:00:17] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[2:00:17] Cameron McEwen: I was going into the you're wrong,
[2:00:19] Cameron McEwen: you're wrong.
[2:00:21] Cameron McEwen: So,
[2:00:21] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[2:00:22] Cameron McEwen: I lost my bearings.
[2:00:25] Cameron McEwen: So,
[2:00:25] Cameron McEwen: back to...
[2:00:26] Bob Dobbs: That's a way to figure stuff out,
[2:00:30] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[2:00:30] Bob Dobbs: That's a way to what?
[2:00:33] Bob Dobbs: That's a way to figure stuff out.
[2:00:34] Bob Dobbs: If you just inquire...
[2:00:38] Bob Dobbs: in the context of your bearings,
[2:00:41] Bob Dobbs: you're never going to get anywhere.
[2:00:42] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[2:00:43] Cameron McEwen: So we're coming up to what you were interested in,
[2:00:46] Cameron McEwen: 109,
[2:00:47] Cameron McEwen: the Global Membrane,
[2:00:48] Cameron McEwen: or Android Meme phase one.
[2:00:50] Cameron McEwen: Finally,
[2:00:51] Cameron McEwen: we get to the Android Meme.
[2:00:54] Cameron McEwen: So
[2:00:55] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to go back up here,
[2:00:57] Cameron McEwen: 108.
[2:00:58] Cameron McEwen: What is the quote on 108 and 107?
[2:01:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:01:05] Bob Dobbs: there is no quote on 108.
[2:01:06] Bob Dobbs: So 107.
[2:01:09] Bob Dobbs: But that was before you got back to 102.
[2:01:14] Bob Dobbs: The future of government lies in the area of psychic ecology.
[2:01:19] Cameron McEwen: That's where they bounce from.
[2:01:20] Cameron McEwen: I bounce back from there.
[2:01:23] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[2:01:23] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[2:01:24] Cameron McEwen: And so I'm saying one is running around in a chemical body trying to figure out whether to have a world government or Black Lives Matter reparations.
[2:01:34] Cameron McEwen: All these chemical body issues,
[2:01:36] Cameron McEwen: none of it is relevant.
[2:01:37] Cameron McEwen: One has got to deal with one psychic ecology of balancing our six bodies.
[2:01:41] Cameron McEwen: As a matter of fact,
[2:01:42] Cameron McEwen: it's more than psychic ecology.
[2:01:44] Cameron McEwen: So that's where we've jumped into
[2:01:46] Cameron McEwen: Bob's stuff.
[2:01:47] Cameron McEwen: It's beyond McLuhan.
[2:01:48] Cameron McEwen: But that's on my route to the tech body,
[2:01:52] Cameron McEwen: which is the real goal of this thing.
[2:01:55] Cameron McEwen: So I say McLuhan knew that government could not happen on a merely national,
[2:01:58] Cameron McEwen: international basis.
[2:01:59] Cameron McEwen: Both the international globalists and the nationalists were incompetent.
[2:02:01] Cameron McEwen: So we said all that.
[2:02:04] Bob Dobbs: And that's why when
[2:02:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says that government cannot be merely national or internationally,
[2:02:14] Bob Dobbs: he's saying it can't be a matter of space.
[2:02:17] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[2:02:18] Bob Dobbs: That's the way he puts it in other contexts.
[2:02:22] Bob Dobbs: So what does that mean,
[2:02:23] Bob Dobbs: it can't be a matter of space?
[2:02:25] Bob Dobbs: It means that if we are genuinely to begin to understand one another.
[2:02:33] Bob Dobbs: We have to begin to understand what understanding is,
[2:02:37] Bob Dobbs: and understanding is psychic ecology.
[2:02:41] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[2:02:42] Bob Dobbs: So
[2:02:43] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan often talked about his work as a strategy for survival,
[2:02:49] Bob Dobbs: and what he was saying is,
[2:02:51] Bob Dobbs: unless we can understand the new field of psychic ecology...
[2:02:58] Cameron McEwen: Which would be your interior landscape.
[2:03:00] Bob Dobbs: Correct,
[2:03:01] Bob Dobbs: correct,
[2:03:02] Bob Dobbs: the interior landscape.
[2:03:04] Bob Dobbs: then we are Self-Condemned not to understand each other,
[2:03:08] Bob Dobbs: not to be able to enter into dialogue,
[2:03:10] Bob Dobbs: not to be able to have peace.
[2:03:13] Bob Dobbs: And in a world with nuclear weapons,
[2:03:16] Bob Dobbs: not to have peace is a very,
[2:03:18] Bob Dobbs: very dangerous thing.
[2:03:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:03:22] Cameron McEwen: so the...
[2:03:23] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan claimed...
[2:03:24] Cameron McEwen: complained in the 60s about the journalists,
[2:03:26] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[2:03:27] Cameron McEwen: hobbling together,
[2:03:28] Cameron McEwen: cobbling together a newspaper copy.
[2:03:32] Cameron McEwen: and using the categories left/right for quick summation of the news environment or to lay out the battle lines.
[2:03:40] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[2:03:41] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[2:03:42] Cameron McEwen: 60 years later,
[2:03:44] Cameron McEwen: it's not left versus right.
[2:03:45] Cameron McEwen: It's nationalist versus globalist.
[2:03:49] Bob Dobbs: But it's also liberal versus conservative in the United States being a big deal,
[2:03:54] Bob Dobbs: and that's basically left and right.
[2:03:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[2:03:58] Cameron McEwen: so liberal is globalist.
[2:04:01] Cameron McEwen: A conservative is nationalist.
[2:04:04] Cameron McEwen: And so it's the same thing,
[2:04:05] Cameron McEwen: but the change in terms is due to the discarnate effect.
[2:04:11] Cameron McEwen: People are not limited to chemical body situations.
[2:04:15] Cameron McEwen: They'll use it to make cultural wealth and argue over race,
[2:04:19] Cameron McEwen: class,
[2:04:19] Cameron McEwen: gender,
[2:04:19] Cameron McEwen: and all that.
[2:04:21] Cameron McEwen: But the real battle on the political level,
[2:04:24] Cameron McEwen: which I like to claim is important,
[2:04:26] Cameron McEwen: is between the
[2:04:28] Cameron McEwen: New World Order
[2:04:29] Cameron McEwen: and those that resist it.
[2:04:31] Cameron McEwen: And there's different levels of sophistication of resistance or different interpretations of what you're up against.
[2:04:37] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[2:04:38] Cameron McEwen: some of the Antigonish will say that there's weather warfare going on,
[2:04:43] Cameron McEwen: that there's major subliminal mind control going on,
[2:04:49] Cameron McEwen: the use of doubles and all kinds of stuff like that.
[2:04:52] Bob Dobbs: Biological warfare going on.
[2:04:55] Cameron McEwen: What did you say,
[2:04:55] Cameron McEwen: biological?
[2:04:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:04:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah?
[2:04:58] Cameron McEwen: So that would be the Alex Jones level.
[2:05:02] Cameron McEwen: And then you have,
[2:05:03] Cameron McEwen: I guess,
[2:05:03] Cameron McEwen: the internationalists would be the World Economic Forum,
[2:05:06] Cameron McEwen: Klaus Schwab,
[2:05:07] Cameron McEwen: and all those reasonable liberals who think Trump a maniac.
[2:05:12] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[2:05:14] Cameron McEwen: they tend to a global economy of jobs that come out of the digital education,
[2:05:25] Cameron McEwen: however far you get in your...
[2:05:27] Cameron McEwen: Digital university education,
[2:05:29] Cameron McEwen: you get that degree,
[2:05:31] Cameron McEwen: and then you might be a candidate for some servomechanism in the digital onslaught,
[2:05:39] Cameron McEwen: the Niagara Falls.
[2:05:42] Cameron McEwen: And people put up with that because they have a lot of chemical body freedoms that they can celebrate and can be distracting and eroding.
[2:05:57] Cameron McEwen: You know that,
[2:05:57] Cameron McEwen: right?
[2:05:58] Cameron McEwen: The chemical body issues,
[2:06:03] Cameron McEwen: pro and con,
[2:06:03] Cameron McEwen: pleasurable or painful,
[2:06:06] Cameron McEwen: are the content that makes the wealth in the
[2:06:10] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme or the Global Membrane.
[2:06:13] Cameron McEwen: That's the content.
[2:06:14] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[2:06:14] Bob Dobbs: I think that's what we're going to be discussing in the next chapter.
[2:06:19] Bob Dobbs: I would say at the level we're at now,
[2:06:25] Bob Dobbs: The only conclusion that one can come to is that all of this talk about national,
[2:06:32] Bob Dobbs: international,
[2:06:33] Bob Dobbs: left,
[2:06:33] Bob Dobbs: right,
[2:06:34] Bob Dobbs: liberal,
[2:06:34] Bob Dobbs: conservative is just a mishmash.
[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: that has no intelligibility to it.
[2:06:41] Bob Dobbs: So,
[2:06:42] Bob Dobbs: for example,
[2:06:42] Bob Dobbs: you said conservatives are national and liberals are international.
[2:06:48] Bob Dobbs: But there's a huge amount of conservatism in America that is intensely international.
[2:06:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:06:59] Bob Dobbs: corporate.
[2:07:00] Bob Dobbs: That wants to take over the world,
[2:07:02] Bob Dobbs: basically.
[2:07:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:07:04] Bob Dobbs: Believes it has a claim on the world.
[2:07:06] Bob Dobbs: And that's called conservatism.
[2:07:07] Bob Dobbs: conservatism somehow.
[2:07:09] Cameron McEwen: Or neoconservatism.
[2:07:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:07:14] Bob Dobbs: neocon.
[2:07:16] Bob Dobbs: So one of McLuhan just complaints is that we don't know what's going on in that kind of language and the need for a psychic ecology is
[2:07:30] Bob Dobbs: precisely to make some sense of this Niagara Falls of information.
[2:07:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:07:37] Cameron McEwen: I'm thinking that since we went through Global Village and then Global Theater,
[2:07:41] Cameron McEwen: now we've got the Android Meme or Global Membrane,
[2:07:44] Cameron McEwen: that another dialectic is the Global Village people versus the Global Theater.
[2:07:48] Cameron McEwen: The Global Theater are the digital sophisticates,
[2:07:51] Cameron McEwen: the millennials,
[2:07:52] Cameron McEwen: who think they understand digital technology and have no qualms of conscience about manipulating the audience about whatever new things they're advocating.
[2:08:02] Cameron McEwen: Whereas the Global Village guys are sort of still nostalgic.
[2:08:06] Cameron McEwen: for their chemical body and for a collection of nations in the global village,
[2:08:14] Cameron McEwen: which eroding to a global village with less nationalism.
[2:08:20] Cameron McEwen: The right-wingers,
[2:08:21] Cameron McEwen: the Trump,
[2:08:24] Cameron McEwen: the neocons might be,
[2:08:26] Cameron McEwen: they can accept that.
[2:08:27] Cameron McEwen: But the Posthuman level,
[2:08:29] Cameron McEwen: the entertainment level,
[2:08:31] Cameron McEwen: the media pranks level,
[2:08:36] Cameron McEwen: the Menippean level.
[2:08:37] Cameron McEwen: It would be in the realm of the global theater.
[2:08:39] Cameron McEwen: And those are the sophisticates.
[2:08:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:08:45] Bob Dobbs: so for me,
[2:08:46] Bob Dobbs: these are all,
[2:08:47] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[2:08:48] Bob Dobbs: simultaneous possibilities of understanding the world,
[2:08:53] Bob Dobbs: and none of them make sense.
[2:08:59] Cameron McEwen: Not unless you include the psychic ecology that McLuhan is talking about.
[2:09:05] Bob Dobbs: So it's like a...
[2:09:06] Bob Dobbs: Psychology can't be included.
[2:09:08] Bob Dobbs: Psychic ecology is the context itself.
[2:09:11] Bob Dobbs: Psychic ecology is the play of art forms,
[2:09:15] Bob Dobbs: like we were talking about a couple hours ago.
[2:09:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:09:20] Cameron McEwen: So
[2:09:21] Cameron McEwen: I have here,
[2:09:21] Cameron McEwen: then when the global theater flipped into the digital Global Membrane slash
[2:09:25] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme,
[2:09:26] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake was there to mirror precisely the chaos,
[2:09:30] Cameron McEwen: which is on page 118 of Finnegans Wake.
[2:09:33] Cameron McEwen: To mirror precisely the chaos and intimacy of Web 2.0.
[2:09:37] Cameron McEwen: That's what I end with.
[2:09:42] Cameron McEwen: Then you go into
[2:09:44] Cameron McEwen: Section 3.
[2:09:46] Cameron McEwen: It took half the book to get here.
[2:09:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:09:52] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[2:09:53] Bob Dobbs: It took us 52 episodes going back and forth to get to this point.
[2:10:00] Cameron McEwen: That's about
[2:10:01] Cameron McEwen: 200 hours almost.
[2:10:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:10:04] Cameron McEwen: So
[2:10:05] Cameron McEwen: I'm just going back.
[2:10:08] Cameron McEwen: Plastic form.
[2:10:09] Cameron McEwen: I did cover all the quotes.
[2:10:10] Cameron McEwen: I sort of jumped around and did the wrong.
[2:10:12] Cameron McEwen: We even got down to Orphic Hymn.
[2:10:14] Cameron McEwen: So that's it.
[2:10:15] Cameron McEwen: We went through the content,
[2:10:17] Cameron McEwen: and I didn't want to stay too long at any point,
[2:10:19] Cameron McEwen: but we really had to get into explaining the Connubium.
[2:10:23] Cameron McEwen: You even started to have to write some columns on it.
[2:10:27] Cameron McEwen: So now I think we're into a new level of what the heck is Bob trying to talk about.
[2:10:33] Cameron McEwen: And I'm still trying to drag McLuhan along to give him credit for being in the game still.
[2:10:40] Cameron McEwen: You know what I mean?
[2:10:43] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[2:10:43] Bob Dobbs: that's good of you,
[2:10:44] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[2:10:44] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[2:10:45] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to try to find quotes.
[2:10:47] Cameron McEwen: Magnanimous of me,
[2:10:49] Cameron McEwen: yes.
[2:10:49] Cameron McEwen: Considering I'm going to slay him later,
[2:10:53] Cameron McEwen: then I don't tell him where I'm dragging him to.
[2:10:57] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[2:10:58] Bob Dobbs: we shall see.
[2:10:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:11:00] Cameron McEwen: But they won't notice that.
[2:11:01] Cameron McEwen: They'll just think,
[2:11:02] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[2:11:02] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[2:11:02] Cameron McEwen: another McLuhan loses his bearings.
[2:11:06] Cameron McEwen: It will be what the reviewers say.
[2:11:09] Cameron McEwen: So
[2:11:10] Cameron McEwen: I think that's it.
[2:11:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:11:12] Cameron McEwen: We got another session.
[2:11:15] Bob Dobbs: It's a good place to break.
[2:11:17] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[2:11:18] Bob Dobbs: We're both ready to get into a whole new phase.
[2:11:21] Cameron McEwen: Yep.
[2:11:22] Bob Dobbs: That's what you call it,
[2:11:23] Bob Dobbs: phase one.
[2:11:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:11:25] Cameron McEwen: this is
[2:11:26] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme phase one.
[2:11:28] Cameron McEwen: There's two phases of Android Meme.
[2:11:30] Cameron McEwen: So remember,
[2:11:32] Cameron McEwen: we are being hoiked up as a role model of intelligent dialogue,
[2:11:36] Cameron McEwen: of reasonable dialogue,
[2:11:37] Cameron McEwen: which the world has lost sight of.
[2:11:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[2:11:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[2:11:42] Bob Dobbs: there's certain humor to that,
[2:11:43] Bob Dobbs: right?
[2:11:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:11:44] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[2:11:45] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[2:11:47] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[2:11:47] Cameron McEwen: Great talking to you.
[2:11:48] Cameron McEwen: We'll talk soon.
[2:11:50] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[2:11:50] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[2:11:51] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot.
[2:11:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[2:11:52] Cameron McEwen: Ewen Cameron.
[2:11:52] Cameron McEwen: Bye.